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*- A New Study of the 
Sonnets of Shakespeare 

By Parke Godwin 



■ Loolce, what thy memotie cannot containe 
Commit to these waste blanks, and thou shah finde 
The children nurst, delivered from thy braine. 
To take a new acquaintance of thy minde." 

Sonnet 77. 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 
New York and London 

Ube IRntcfterlJOcfier iDress 

1900 



'--^ 



35585 

LJbrary of Conai>es« 

Two CUftES ReCflVED 

AUG 171900 

Copyright entry 

SECOND COPY. 

DeHverod t« 

ORDER DIVISION, 

S EP 25I9 QQ 






Copyright, 1900 



PARKE GODWIN 



Ube IRnJcfterbocRer fPcesB, mew HJorfe 



PREFACE. 

'X'HE greater part of what is contained in 
this volume was originally prepared as an 
informal address to a small circle of friends ; 
but as it soon became evident that the subject 
could not be brought within the compass of 
that mode of communication, the author was 
induced to change the matter he had in hand 
into the more formal and deliberate shape of 
an essay. It would have been better for him, in 
order to avoid possible repetitions, oversights, 
and peculiarities of diction not suited to an 
elaborate treatise, if he had written the whole 
work over again, but he was warned against 
that labor by his advancing years, which might 
add to, instead of decreasing, the defects of his 
performance. 

In submitting the work as it is to the judg- 
ment of his readers, the author desires to direct 
their attention particularly to two things : 
first, the Method of Investigation, which con- 
sists in interpreting the sonnets from their 
own words almost exclusively, and without re- 
curring to any supposed extraneous incidents 



iv Preface 

in the life of the great poet, of which we 
know absolutely nothing ; and, second, to the 
main result of the application of that method, 
— a division of the sonnets, in which nearly- 
one half of them are found to relate to the 
passional experiences of the poet under the 
different influences of a true and a false affec- 
tion, while the other half (or a little more than 
half) are found to relate to his poetic develop- 
ment, — his aspirations, aims, struggles, disap- 
pointments, and final successes. 

By this means, the sonnets are lifted from a 
low level of petty concern, — " a cat-and-dog 
fight," as Butler, a recent commentator, has 
said, — up to a high point of aesthetic interest 
and significance. They now present the poet 
during an early formative period of his career, 
when he was laying the foundation of his 
character, and of an artistic skill which has had 
no parallel. 

It is more than possible that in presenting 
these conclusions I have made some mistakes 
of detail, either as to the construction I have 
put upon this sonnet or that, or as to the place 
I have assigned to it in the general exposition : 
but such errors are of minor importance ; — 
and the main question is, whether the principal 
view at which I have arrived is the correct 



Preface v 

view or not ; for if it be the correct view, it 
amounts to a complete revolution in this branch 
of Shakespearian literature. Let the public 
decide. 

P. G. 

New York, June 3, 1900. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction i 

I — A Brief History of the Sonnets . . 3 
II — Of Former Expositions of the Sonnets 31 

PART FIRST 

A New Study of the Sonnets . . .51 

I — A Central and Explanatory Sonnet . 58 

II — The Independents or Solitaries . . 65 

III — A Plea for Poetic or Creative Art . 67 

IV — A Young Love-Time 89 

V — The Episode of the Dark Lady . .130 
VI — The Poet's Communion with the Higher 

Muse • 166 

PART SECOND 
The Original Sonnets as newly Arranged 227 



INTRODUCTION. 



CHAPTER FIRST. 

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE SONNETS. 

A LATE historian of English literature 
tells us that at one time in the reign of 
Queen Elizabeth there was an outbreak of 
sonnet-writing, which for mass and beauty has 
never been paralleled.^ It was a form of verse 
which, having long held sway in Italy, passed 
through France into England, where it be- 
came a fashion. Introduced by Wyatt and 
Surrey about the year 1550, it was taken up 
by a great many others, and among them by 
Thomas Watson, whom Spenser calls " the 
noblest swain that ever piped upon an oaten 
quill," then by Spenser himself, the foremost 
poet of his age, and finally by Sir Philip Sid- 
ney, who, as scholar and soldier, enjoyed a 
universal popularity. In the course of time 
nearly everybody who could write verses at all 
wrote them in this style ; a dozen different col- 
lections of them were published before 1596; 
and it is estimated that more than two thousand 

' A History of English Literature, by George Saintsbury, p. 79. 

3 



4 A New Study of 

specimens were in circulation, if not always 
printed, by the end of the century. 

Among those touched by the common im- 
pulse, was a young versifier of Stratford-on- 
Avon, named Shakespeare, who wrote more 
than 154 poems of the kind, all strictly con- 
formed to the conventional manner, — three 
quatrains of alternate rhymes, ending in a 
couplet, — and some of them to the conven- 
tional spirit. 

Every person of culture who reads the Son- 
nets nowadays is pleased to find in most of 
them fertility of thought, beauty of imagery, 
and mellifluous versification,^ but having read 

' With some exceptions : Walter Savage Landor, in spite of his 
high admiration of the poet, maintains that the Sonnets, while they 
exhibit intensity and strength of thought, lack the imagination 
which is his main characteristic {Works, vol. iv., p. 56). Else- 
where, also, Landor (vol. iv., p. 12) remarks that not a single one 
is very admirable, and few sink very low. " They are hot and 
pothery with much condensation and delicacy, like a raspberry jam, 
without cream, crust, or bread, to break its viscosity." Hallam 
wished that the Sonnets had never been published, but that was on 
moral not aesthetic grounds. His words are : " There is weakness 
and folly in all excessive misplaced affection, which is not re- 
deemed by those touches of nobler sentiment that abound in this 
long series of sonnets. But there are also faults of a merely external 
nature. The obscurity is often such as only conjecture can pene- 
trate ; the strain of admiration and tenderness would be too 
monotonous were it less unpleasing ; and so many frigid conceits 
are scattered around that we might almost fancy the poet to have 
written without genuine emotion, did not a host of other passages 
attest the contrary." 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 5 

them he is at a loss to know precisely what they 
are all about. Are they, he asks himself, a 
continuous poem, or so many isolated poems ? 
Are they autobiographical or dramatic ; or 
are they poems at all in the proper sense, and 
not enigmas, concealing under a poetic garb 
some deep and occult philosophy ? Each of 
these questions has been answered affirma- 
tively and negatively with equal zeal and 
ingenuity./ In the complete editions of Shake- 
speare's Works the editors have tried their 
hands at solving the several difficulties, but 
not with much success ; and bulky volumes 
have been prepared to prove various theories 
as to their design and significance, which carry 
no conviction with them beyond the immediate 
circle of authorship.^ 

These differences of opinion are largely due 
to a certain obscurity in the Sonnets them- 
selves : they do not carry their meaning on 
their face, like the Sonnets of Dante, Petrarch, 
and other Italian writers which preceded them, 
or like those of Spenser, Sidney, Drummond, 
Constable, etc., which were contemporaneous, 
or, again, like those of Bowles, Keats, Words- 
worth, and Mr. and Mrs. Browning, which have 

^ See Massey's Shakespeare's Sonnets, Armitage Brown's Shake- 
peare's Autobiographical Poems, 1838, and others, which, however, 
I cite at second-hand. 



6 A New Study of 

come afterwards. They allude to situations 
that have now passed entirely out of memory ; 
they indulge in conceits and plays upon words 
which rather perplex than help the understand- 
ing of them ; and often they admit locutions, 
which, if not wholly obsolete, are yet very 
different from our accepted forms. Indeed, in 
reading them, it sometimes happens that we 
come upon passages which at first seem clear 
and intelligible, but which on closer scrutiny, 
like the face of a dumb man, get indefinite and 
vague. 

Not a little of this obscurity is to be ascribed 
to the manner in which the Sonnets were in- 
troduced to the public, — which was such as not 
only to render corruptions of the text inevi- 
table, but to suggest many misleading collateral 
questions. They were first alluded to inci- 
dentally in 1598 by one Francis Meres, a Mas- 
ter of Arts in both Universities, and more or 
less familiar with the literature and literary 
men of his time. A book of his called Pal- 
ladis Tamia, or Wifs Treasury, contained a 
discourse on " Our English Poets Compared 
with the Greek, Latin, and Italian Poets," 
wherein he referred to Shakespeare many 
times, and always in terms of eulogy. " The 
sweet, witty soul of Ovid," he says, " lives in 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 7 

mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare. 
Witness his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, 
and his sugared sonnets among his private 
friends." 

*' Shakespeare among the English," he goes 
on to say, ** is excellent in both kinds for the 
stage : for comedy, witness his Gentlemen of 
Verona, his Comedy of Errors, his Love's La- 
bor 's Lost, his Loves Labor 's Won " (supposed 
by most critics to have been the original of 
All 's Well that Ends Well), " his Midstcmmer 
Night 's Dream,, and his Merchant of Venice ; 
and for tragedy, his Richard II., his Richard 
III, his Henry IV., his King fohn, his Titus 
Andronicus, and his Romeo and Juliet.'' This 
list, dividing Henry IV. into its two parts, men- 
tions no less than thirteen plays in all, although 
it does not include the Taming of the Shrew, 
nor Pericles, commonly referred to this early 
time. 

Whether the "sugared sonnets" spoken of 
above were the same as those we now have 
can not be known positively, but it is more 
than probable that they were. As they are 
cited in proof of the poet's merit and distinc- 
tion, along with such writings as the Midsum- 
mer Night's Dream, the Merchant of Venice, 
the two Richards, and King John, it is not at 



8 A New Study of 

all likely that they would have been allowed 
to perish. 

Besides, there is a strong presumption as 
to the identity of many of them, raised by a 
fact which is none the less convincing because 
it is indirect and casual. In the year 1599, — 
the year after Meres's allusion, — a book was 
published called The Passionate Pilgrim^ which 
contained several poems by Shakespeare and, 
among the rest, two sonnets, now known as 
Nos. 138 and 144, the first of which (No. 138) 
refers to a love adventure in which the lovers 
are on the most friendly, familiar, and even 
jocose terms, while the second (No. 144) shows 
that this relation has been changed into one 
of suspicion and distrust. The poet is now 
assured that he has been betrayed by his lady, 
while he expresses a painful fear of the friend. 
These sonnets thus disclose an amatory ex- 
perience, which must have had its beginning, 
its intermediate incidents, and its result, and 
are evidently parts of a more extended whole, 
which whole we find in the Sonnets as they 
have come down to us. They describe, as we 
shall see, the personal appearance and accom- 
plishments of the lady, the gradual approaches 
of the swain, their increasing intimacy, the rise 
of disturbing suspicions, the poet's complete 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 9 

illusion for a time, and then the final rupture 
and separation of the parties. The inference, 
therefore, would seem to be inevitable that 
these sonnets, at least, were extant before 1599. 

The Sonnets, however, were not put forth 
in book form until the year 1 609 — eleven years 
after the mention of them by Meres, — when 
the poet had acquired a greatly increased fame 
as a playwright, and a widespread curiosity 
obtained as to what else he miorht have written. 
Of this curiosity the publishers took advantage, 
and, looking up everything that purported to 
be his, gave it to the world. In the case of the 
sonnets, the successful hunter was one Thomas 
Thorpe, who was not so much a printer or a 
publisher as a literary purveyor, and already 
responsible for some twenty considerable vol- 
umes. 

Getting possession in some way or another 
of these sonnets, Mr. T. T. issued them, as a 
quarto, with this peculiar title : ''Shakespeare s 
Sonnets, never before imprinted. At London 
by G. Eld. for T. T.^ and are to be sold by 
Wm. Apsley, 1609." A few copies read "and 
are to be sold by John Wright, dwelling at 
Christ's Church Gate." In addition to the 

' This T. T. is identified with Thomas Thorpe by an entry in the 
Stationers' Register, under date of May 20th. 



lo A New Study of 

sonnets, this volume contained also a complete 
poem of considerable length and remarkable 
beauty, called " The Lovers' Complaint." 

If Thorpe had confined his enterprise to the 
simple issue of the poems he would have ren- 
dered us an invaluable service ; but he appears 
to have been ambitious on his own account 
and so prefixed to his quarto this dedication : 

TO . THE . ONLIE . BEGETTER . OF. 

THESE . INSVING . SONNETS . 

Mr- W. H. all. HAPPINESSE. 

AND . THAT . ETERNITIE . 

PROMISED . 

BY . 

OVR-EVER-LIVING-POET . 

WISHETH . 

the well-wishing, 
adventvrer in 

SETTING . 
FORTH . 

T. T. 

This bit of quaintness, in which Mr. Tommy 
Thorpe tried to show off his wit, has proved to 
be a perfect mare's nest to the critics, who 
have found no end of perplexity in its terms. 
In the first place, they ask, what did Tommy 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 1 1 

mean by the phrase " the onHe begetter " ? 
Ordinarily it would mean the author of the 
sonnets, or the person by whom they were 
written. But that has not satisfied the mystery- 
mongers, — some of whom contend that the 
" onlie begetter " was the person by whom they 
were inspired, or to whom they were addressed, 
which Is rather a forced use of the words, — to 
say nothing of the fact that several persons 
seem to be involved, female as well as male. 
Others contend that the " onlie begetter " was 
the person who procured them, or got them 
together for the printer, — an equally strange 
locution, just as it would be to say that the lad 
or lass who furnishes us with strawberries in 
the summer is the begetter of strawberries. 

Then, again, who was Mr. W. H., said 
to have been this " onlie begetter," and for 
whom T. T. wishes all happiness and the im- 
mortality promised by the ever-living poet? 
The answers have been almost as many as the 
writers on the subject. It was, says one, the 
Earl of Southampton, an early friend and 
patron of the poet, the initials of whose family 
name, Henry Wriothesley, are simply reversed ; 
no, says another, it was the young Earl of 
Pembroke, who was also an intimate friend 
of the bard ; not at all, exclaims a third, it was 



12 A New Study of 

William Hart, a nephew of the poet, mentioned 
in his will, and who probably purloined the 
copy ; or, more likely, adds a fourth, William 
Hathaway, his brother-in-law, who had access 
to his papers ; or, finally, it was one William 
Hughes, plainly referred to in line 7, Sonnet 20, 
although nobody has ever yet discovered who 
William Hughes might happen to have been. 

I shall not discuss these various wrang- 
lings further than to say that, in my guess, 
which is as good as another's, Mr. Tommy 
Thorpe, having read a deal in the early son- 
nets about begetting "a son," and also in the 
later sonnets about one Mr. Will, — a pun on 
the author's name, — and desiring at the same 
time to be quaint and funny for himself, put 
the two together in order to tell us how the 
exclusive author ("the onlie begetter") was 
no other than W. H. (Will Himself), or the 
veritable Master William Shakespeare. He 
resorted to this device, no doubt, in the hope 
thereby of averting the wrath of the poet, 
whose wares he had surreptitiously acquired 
and given to the public. 

Thorpe's dedication was really of no moment 
in itself, or as a help to the interpretation of 
the poems. It was a little trick of his own, 
to further his own purposes, perhaps to excite 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 13 

a curiosity which might promote the sale of 
his book. It was an habitual practice of pub- 
lishers of the time to affix dedications to their 
works, confined to initial letters merely, such 
as Mr. O. S., Mr. B. W., Mr. R. L., etc., and 
among them Mr. W. H. was a good deal in 
favor. There are several books of this sort still 
extant and notably a collection of pious poems 
by one Southwell, a Jesuit, who wishes his 
patron, Mr. W. H., a long life and the achieve- 
ment of all his desires.^ 

Thorpe's Quarto, however, as it is our only- 
authority for the sonnets, is exceedingly im- 
portant, and at once suggests several inquiries 
that ought to be determined before we proceed 
to their interpretation. The first of these re- 
lates to 

I. Their Attthenticity and Correctness. 

That the poems were written by Shakespeare 
admits of no doubt. They were in circulation 
privately, according to Meres, for nearly twenty 
years during his lifetime, and much discussed 
among his friends. They were published seven 
years before he died, and attracted a great deal 
of attention because of his growing fame as a 

' See Lee's Life of Shakespeare, p. 400. 



14 A New Study of 

playwright. Yet no one of his contemporaries, 
so far as we can learn, ever questioned their 
origin. Within twenty years after his decease, 
while many of his friends were still alive, they 
were republished, and, as the writer of an in- 
troduction said, " with the same purity that the 
author when living avouched." It was reserved 
for the long-eared quidnuncs of the present 
century, who invented the Baconian nonsense, 
to raise even the thinnest mist of a doubt on 
the subject. One of these ^ insists that they 
were written by any one of a half-dozen wits of 
the time, provided it was not Shakespeare ; and 
another has dug up for the authorship a masto- 
don as big as the latest dinosaurus of Wyo- 
ming.^ He maintains, in the face of the most 
positive, various, and well-authenticated his- 
torical evidence, — contemporary opinion, the 
witness of " comrades " and intimate friends, 
the records of books still extant, and many of 
the most convincing incidental confirmations, — 
that " the Sonnets were not written by Shake- 
speare, but were written to him as the patron 
or friend of the poet ; that while Shakespeare 

' See Hamlet's iVoh'-Book, by William D. O'Connor (Houghton, 
Mifflin & Co., 1885). 

* Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shake- 
spearean Plays and Poems, by Jesse Johnson. G. P. Putnam's Sons, 
New York, 1899. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 15 

might have had something to do with some of 
the plays," their real author was " * a great 
poet,' ' a dreamy and transforming Genius,' 
[sic] who wrought in and for them that which 
is imperishable, and so wrought although he 
was to have no part in their fame and per- 
haps but a small financial recompense " ; and 
that "it is the loves, griefs, fears, forebod- 
ings, and sorrows of the student and recluse, 
thus circumstanced and confined, that the 
Sonnets portray."^ "Wonderful, wonderful!" 
as Celia exclaims, and then again " most 
wonderful ! " Let us only admit the exceed- 
ingly natural and simple supposition that the 
greatest poet of the ages, who "lived for sixty- 
five or seventy years in London," during one 
of the most inquisitive as well as enlightened 
periods of history, and whose works made an 
epoch in the annals of literature, never re- 
vealed himself in any other way to man, 
woman, or child that we know of, not even by 
name, — let us admit that small assumption, and 
the Sonnets are " no longer mysterious or in- 
explicable." Their author may be the un- 
paralleled Ignotus of all time, but they are as 
translucent as Mother Goose. 

But while Shakespeare was the writer of the 

' Johnson, page 3, but see also p. 92. 



1 6 A New Study of 

Sonnets, he had nothing to do with their pub- 
lication. The very form of the title-page, 
Shakespeare s Sonnets, is proof positive of this. 
All his other works — the narrative poems and 
the early quartos — are said to be " by William 
Shakespeare," which is the customary and pre- 
scriptive style of an author who ventures on 
his own account. Besides, the Quarto, as 
printed, abounds in typographical and other 
errors which might easily have escaped the 
eyes of a proof-reader, but not those of the 
writer himself. Thus, for example, in Sonnet 
48, their is put for thy no less than four times, 
making nonsense of the verse; Sonnet 126 
wants the final couplet, which is indicated by 
parentheses, thus ( ), an obvious expe- 
dient of a printer, but not of an author ; again, 
in Sonnet 144, the second line repeats the 
close of the first line, making bad sense as well 
as bad measure, which could not have eluded 
the writer ; and No. 145 is not a Sonnet at 
all, but a bit of octosyllabic doggerel, which 
a writer of Shakespeare's judgment would 
not have retained in the collection. As the 
poems issued under his own auspices, like 
the Venus and Adonis and the Lttcrece, have 
few typographical faults, we have a right to 
conclude that the Sonnets, which are full of 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 17 

them, could not have had the benefit of his 
supervision. 

2. The Order of Arrangement. 

The order in which the Sonnets are printed 
in the Quarto has been thought by many of great 
importance, though I do not myself see why the 
sequence of the subject-matter should depend 
upon the numerical sequence. A poet, writing 
in a commonplace-book from day to day, might 
treat of one theme to-day and of another to- 
morrow, as his mood suggested, and yet num- 
ber his pieces consecutively, without implying 
any connection between them. Indeed, whole 
weeks might intervene in which he would be 
absorbed in different topics, without recurring 
to any particular one. Shakespeare's Sonnets 
read, on the first view, as if they had been 
written in this piecemeal way. - Ninety-nine 
out of a hundred readers would say of them at 
once with Mr. Grant White, that as they stand 
"they are distractingly and remedilessly con- 
fused." None the less Professor Dowden in- 
sists that they now stand as first written. 
" Repeated readings have convinced me," he 
says, " that the sonnets stand in the right 
order, sonnet connected with sonnet " ; yet he 
immediately recognizes a grand break at No. 



1 8 A New Study of 

126, and several smaller intermediate breaks 
which he calls renvoi} The connections he 
finds between consecutive sonnets are often so 
forced and remote that one can hardly think 
that he takes himself seriously. In fact, he 
does distrust his own discernment, and " freely 
warns the reader " that he has perhaps, in some 
instances, fancied points of connection which 
have no real existence. But there is no " per- 
haps " about it : in several instances he lugs 
them in together by the head and shoulders 
or by main force. I cannot for the life of 
me discern the affinities that appear to have 
been patent to him between the i8th and 19th, 
the 19th and 20th, and so on up to the 33d ; or 
between the 34th and 35th, and the 37th and 
38th, and so on to the 45th ; or between the 
49th and 50th, and so on up to the 56th ; or 
between the 58th and 59th, and so on to the 
65th ; and I might cite dozens of others, in 
which it is as difficult to find any relativity as 
it would be to find a needle in a haystack. 
Groups of sonnets show themselves every, 
where, as we shall afterwards see, but between 
them are gaps which, if " not so deep as a well 
nor so wide as a church door," are enough. 

* The Sonnets of Willia?n Shakespeare. By Edward Dowden. 
New York, Appleton & Co., 1887. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 19 

It is significant that in the earhest edition of 
the Sonnets after the Quarto — that of 1640 — 
no attention whatever is paid to the order ; 
the poems are distributed as the editor pleases, 
and generally in clusters under particular titles ; 
and that edition is followed by Gildon, Sewell, 
Lintot, and other editors of the eighteenth cen- 
tury. More recently, Knight, one of the most 
intelligent and judicious of judges, departs 
widely from the accepted order, whenever he 
wishes to illustrate what he considers subjects 
that ought to be grouped, — jumping ad Itbitzcm 
from No. 18 to No. 90, from No. 22 to No. 1 10, 
then back again to No. 62, etc. In this free- 
dom he is followed by Hudson, who arranges 
the poems in zigzags, — going from No. 18 to 
No. 55, from No. 21 to No. 139, and from 
No. 126 to No. 22. It is needless to add that 
all the more elaborate commentators, espe- 
cially those who have written great books about 
them, feel themselves warranted in adapting 
the order of the poems to the exigencies of 
their theories. 

My own notion is, that when Shakespeare 
wrote the sonnets in his table books he num- 
bered them in the order in which they were 
written, without reference to their connections 
of theme; and afterwards, when he copied them 



20 A New Study of 

or allowed them to be copied for circulation 
among his friends, he adhered to the same des- 
ultory arrangement, with the exception perhaps 
that to one sonnet he affixed an especial num- 
ber for purposes of elucidation which I shall 
hereafter point out. 

3. The Date of Composition. 

A more Important point, in fact a vital one 
in this inquiry, is the time at which the son- 
nets were composed. Were they all, or the 
most of them, in existence in 1597 when Meres 
alludes to them as circulating from hand to 
hand ? or were they still comparatively new 
when they were put into book form by Thorpe 
in 1609? Dowden,^ summing up the prevail- 
ing opinion about them, says that " the general 
characteristics of the style lead us to believe 
that some of the sonnets, as, for example, Nos. 
1-17, belong to a period not later than Romeo 
and Juliet " (which would be, taking the ear- 
liest edition of that play, about 1591, or, taking 
the later edition, about 1597), "while others, 
as Nos. 64-74, seem to echo the sadder tones 
heard in Hamlet and Measii7^e for Measure " 
(which would be for both about 1602-3).^ " I 

' Sonnets, Introduction, p. xliv. 

2 That is, after Much Ado, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, All 'j 
Well, Othello, and Lear, 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 21 

can not think," he goes on to say, "that any 
of the sonnets are eadier than Daniel's Delia 
(1592), which I beheve supphed Shakespeare 
with a model of this form of verse ^ ; and 
though I can allege no strong evidence for the 
opinion, I should not be disposed to place any 
later than 1605." Boas agrees in the main 
with this conclusion, putting the sonnets after 
the narrative poems, i. e., after 1594;^ and 
George Brandes, in a still more recent work,^ 
fixes the date about 1601, which would be 
after Shakespeare had written the thirteen 
plays ascribed to him by Meres, and added to 
them Henry V., Julius Ccesar^ the first draft 
of Hamlet^ and those unsurpassed comedies. 
Much Ado^ As You Like It, and Twelfth 
Night. He was then in the thirty-seventh 
year of his age, of prosperous fortunes, of wide 
renown as an author, and held in the highest 
esteem as a man by " divers of worship." "^ In 
fact, he had been noted for several years already, 
not only for " his facetious grace in writing, 

' Daniel most likely came after Shakespeare as a writer of 
sonnets. 

^ Shakespeare and His Predecessors, by F. L. Boas. Charles 
Scribner's Sons, 1896. 

^ William Shakespeare : A Critical Study, By George Brandes. 
The Macmillan Co., i8g8. 

'^ Chettle's Kind-Harte' s Dreame, 1592. 



22 A New Study of 

but for his civil and excellent demeanor, and 
uprightness of dealing." 

All of these gentlemen shot wide of their 
mark : the Sonnets were of much earlier date 
than they suppose; and the proof of it is "those 
general characteristics of style," on which Mr. 
Dowden relies.^ 

(i) While some of them are crude enough, 
as Hudson says, "to have been the handi- 
work of a smart schoolboy," they have all of 
them more or less marks of immaturity. The 
most conspicuous of these are the identical and 
bad rhymes in which they abound, such as 
"moment" and " comment," " decrease " and 
"increase," "open" and "broken," "astrono- 
my" and "quality," "key" and "survey," and a 
great many others no less abominable, which a 
practised writer could have easily avoided. I 
might add, too, as showing youthfulness and 
want of skill, that the thought is so often 
greatly in advance of the power to express it ; 
,or, an ambition of aim not carried out by the 
execution; but why resort to these rather dispu- 

' The only writer who has fixed upon an early date is Samuel 
Butler, whose work, printed after this chapter was written, assigns 
the writing of the sonnets to the period between 1585 and 1588, 
but, as he carries his pretensions so far as to name not only the 
month but the part oi the month in which each sonnet was written, 
he gives a sort of ludicrousness and absurdity to the whole subject. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 23 

table indications of style, when so many of 
the sonnets themselves declare directly or by 
inevitable inference that they are the work of an 
inexperienced hand ? Take, for example. No. 
16, one of a series of seventeen sonnets, in 
which the writer describes his pen as a " pupil- 
pen," or a pen not yet a master of its art ; or 
No. 25, which presents its author as in humble 
circumstances, and quite unknown to the pub- 
lic ; or No. 29, in which he speaks of himself as 
neither a favorite of fortune, nor of public opin- 
ion, but an outcast from both ; envying the 
better positions, and desiderating the qualities 
which he does not possess ; or No. 32, in which 
he depreciates his verse as rude and easily out- 
stripped by that of other writers ; or Nos. 33 and 
34, lamenting the disappointments of his career, 
which once promised well but is now covered 
over by clouds ; or No. 36, which complains 
that he is made tame or is disabled as a writer by 
the intense enmity of fortune ; or No. 38, which 
confesses that the efforts of his Muse are of 
slight effect and not acceptable to the taste of 
his day ; or No. 69, which complains that his 
merely external accomplishments are appreci- 
ated, while his finer qualities are overlooked or 
disparaged ; or No. 72, which tells that the poet 
is really ashamed of what he brings forth, and 



24 ' A New Study of 

that it has nothing of excellence in it ; or No. 
80, which claims for his lines no merit but the 
simple merit of sincerity of sentiment ; or No. 
88, which deplores that he is full of faults and 
weaknesses; and others, like the iioth, iiith, 
1 1 7th, in which he accuses himself of having 
wandered away from truth and beauty to court 
popular favor by appeals to a low public senti- 
ment. Assuredly, such things could have been 
said by Shakespeare of himself only in his cal- 
low days — when he was still struggling with his 
youthful limitations, and before he had attained 
a full consciousness of his higher powers. 

(2) Then again, in addition to these thirty 
sonnets are others, which seem to form series, 
like Nos. yS, 79, 80, 82, 83, 84, 85, in some 
of which he admits the superiority of his rivals j 
and despairs of reaching their heights of excel- 
lence, and proposes to withdraw from the field ; 
while in others he complains that certain rivals 
had imitated his manner to such an extent as 
to deprive him of the credit of originality, and 
thereby rendered him commonplace. Either 
of these positions, as I think, his concessions 
of his own inferiority, or his complaints of a 
damaging imitation, could have been assumed 
only at the very outset of his career, and be- 
fore he had achieved any of those wonderful 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 25 

works which placed him at the head of his kind, 
and beyond haiHng distance of competition. 
As the author of the earlier poems and some of 
the earlier plays he might have been followed 
and even surpassed by a few of his contempo- 
raries, like Greene, Marlowe, Peele, and Lodge, 
but as the author of his greater comedies, 
tragedies, and historical pieces he stood alone. 
One thing at least is quite certain, — that these 
sonnets in which he deplores his own obscurity, 
deprecates his poverty, brands his faults and 
errors with severe reproaches, and tells of his 
struggles with the Muse, must have been writ- 
ten before the Venus and Adonis and the 
Lucrece appeared in 1593-4, because when 
those poems were made public they were re- 
ceived, as a late biographer says, " with un- 
qualified enthusiasm." " The critics," he adds, 
" vied with each other in the exuberance of 
their eulogies, in which they proclaimed that the 
fortunate author had gained a permanent place 
on the summit of Parnassus." ^ Poets them- 
selves distinguished, like Draper, Gierke, 
Weever, Garew, and, best of all, Spenser, 
call him " the honey tongue," " the unmatch- 
able," " the modern Gatullus " " whose Muse 
is full of high thought's invention." 

' Lee's Life of Shakespeare, pp. 78, 79. 



26 A New Study of 

(3) Then again, as we shall see more fully 
hereafter, are sonnets (more or less connected) 
in which the poet weeps the estrangement of 
his higher ideals (88-93) • confesses his own 
departure from the better methods of art, as a 
cause (100-103), resolves to return to rightful 
ways (107-112, 117, 118), and finally rejoices 
in the conquest of himself, and the conse- 
quent acquisition of a mastery which assures 
him an immortal triumph (123-125, 55). In 
all this one discerns the unmistakable signs 
of an incomplete development. 

Taking, then, these several considerations to- 
gether, — the youthful tone of the sonnets, the 
repeated confessions of poverty and obscurity 
by the poet, his complaints of the rivalry of 
others, and the marked similarities in many 
respects between the sonnets and the earlier 
poems and plays, — the conclusion becomes 
inevitable as to the time of their compo- 
sition. 

We cannot fix the precise year in which they 
were written, but we may assign the period 
within which they were written. It covered 
the time between 1582, about the date of his 
marriage, and 1592, when he had become more 
or less famous both as an actor and a play- 
wright. A few of them may have been 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 27 

executed after 1 592, especially those of personal 
compliment addressed to friends and those in 
which he boasts of his poetic triumphs, but the 
great body of them must have belonged to 
the time I have designated. 

If it be objected to this view that, in several 
of the sonnets, the poet speaks of himself in 
terms which imply age, as when he writes : 
"my days are past the best" (138), or, "as 
crushed and o'erdone by time's injurious 
hand " (63), or, " as bated and chopped with 
tanned antiquity" (62), or, as being at that 
time of life " when yellow leaves, or none, do 
hang upon the boughs" (j2>)^ etc., I answer, 
first, that many of these expressions are to be 
taken, as we shall see, in an aesthetic and not 
physical sense ; and, secondly, as Grant White 
suggests, " that owing to the shorter span of 
human life in those days, a man was regarded 
as old before he had reached the thirties." 
Shakespeare himself, in Sonnet 2, describes a 
person who had attained to forty winters only, 
as having " deep trenches," (wrinkles) in his 
face, " sunken eyes," and of a coldness of blood 
that needed to be warmed. It was, moreover, 
a conventional practice of the poets then to 
exaggerate their years and deplore their " se- 
nectitude and decay," as may be seen in Daniel, 



28 A New Study of 

Drayton, Barnfield, and others who were not 
yet at middle age. Even in our own times, we 
know that Byron, who died at thirty-six, pro- 
claimed a little while before that he was " in 
the sere and yellow leaf." 

To this brief history of the Sonnets it is 
perhaps well to add that they never acquired 
the popularity of Shakespeare's plays or of his 
other poems : for while the Venus and Adonis 
and the Lucrece passed rapidly through sev- 
eral editions, the Sonnets were not republished 
until 1640, — thirty-one years after the Quarto 
was published, and twenty-four years after the 
poet's death. They then appeared in a med- 
ley with other poems, and in groups ** dis- 
tributed seemingly at random," as Hudson 
says, and under headings which had no more 
to do with the poems than the marginal notes 
in our old Bibles have to do with the text as 
the Higher Criticism construes it now. It 
was entitled Poems (sometimes Poemes^ by 
Will Shakespeare, Gent. It omitted seven of 
the best sonnets, gave two, 138 and 144, in 
the corrupt form of The Passionate Pilgrim, 
and though a few misprints are corrected others 
are introduced. In his preface the publisher 
avers that the poems " appear in the same 
purity, as the author when living announced," 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 29 

most likely an invention of the publisher to 
commend his wares. 

During the seventeenth century, the public 
seems to have been satisfied with the Folios 
of 1623, 1632, 1663, 1664, and of 1685 (which 
included seven spurious plays attributed to 
Shakespeare, but excluded the poems as if 
they were not worthy of the association). It 
was not until the eighteenth century (about 
1709), when Rowe printed the first critical edi- 
tion of the plays (followed by a reprint in 
1 714), that Lintot put forward an edition of 
the poems, which was followed subsequently 
by Gildon (1710), Sewell (1725), Pope (1725), 
and Steevens (1728). The most of these, 
singular to say, took Benson's farrago for 
their model. Steevens, indeed, in an early 
edition of Johnson's Shakespeare, reprinted 
the poems but excluded the sonnets, because, 
as he said, " the strongest act of Parliament 
that could be framed would fail to compel 
readers into their service." The Rev. Edward 
Malone, in 1780, seems to have been the first 
editor to approach an estimation of the true 
value of the Sonnets. Even he was exceed- 
ingly cautious in his commendations, but he is 
entitled to the praise of having restored the 
Sonnets to public admiration 170 years after 



30 The Sonnets of Shakespeare 

their first appearance. Since Malone, a great 
many new and elegant editions have appeared, 
among which an edition by Palgrave, and an 
edition by Dowden, are by far the best, al- 
though the latter is disfigured by the eccentric 
interpretations in which the editor indulges. 



CHAPTER SECOND. 

OF FORMER EXPOSITIONS OF THE SONNETS. 

THE historian of English literature already 
cited says that " no vainer fancies this 
side of madness ever entered the human mind, 
than certain expositions of the Sonnets of 
Shakespeare."^ This is not an exaggerated 
judgment, and the number of these fancies is 
no less remarkable than their absurdity.^ 

These varied views might be neglected 

' A History cf Etiglish Literature, by George Saintsbury, vol. 
ii., p. i8. 

* They are so numerous, indeed, that Professor Dowden, in his 
admirable essay {Shakespeare : His Mind atid Art, by Edward 
Dowden, p. 350. Harper and Brothers, New York, 1881), has been 
able to distribute them into classes, as a naturalist does his weeds 
and insects. The principal kinds, he says, are as follows : (i) The 
Sonnets are poems of an imaginary friendship and love (held by Dyce, 
Delius, H. Morley, etc.). (2) They are partly imaginary and partly 
autobiographical (held by C. Knight, H. von Friesen, R. Simpson, 
etc.). (3) They form a general allegory (held by Barnstorff, Heraud, 
Karl Karpf, and, I may add. Gen. Hitchcock, and E. J. Dunning). 
(4) They are exclusively autobiographic (held by Bright, Boaden, 
A. Brown, and H. Brown). (5) They are partly addressed to the 
Earl of Southampton, and partly written in his name to Elizabeth 
Vernon (held by Mrs. Jameson and Gerald Massey), and (6) They 
were partly written for the Earl of Pembroke, to be sent by him to 
the dark woman. Lady Rich. 

31 



32 A New Study of 

altogether, but for the fact that two or three of 
them are so diametrically opposed to what I 
consider the true view that they compel a 
moment's consideration. 

(i) The first of these regards the Sonnets 
as merely miscellaneous and discursive exercises 
of fancy, having no connection one with an- 
other and no collective significance. It was 
first suggested, I think, by Halliwell-Phillipps, 
but it has since been more elaborately argued 
by the German Professor Delius. If it be the 
right view, it vacates our inquiry from the out- 
set, and renders useless, as Dowden says, any 
attempt " to shape a story, reconcile discrepan- 
cies, ascertain a chronology, or identify per- 
sons." But assuredly no one can read the 
Sonnets, even in a cursory way, without per- 
ceiving that they form many connected groups, 
— groups of twos, as Nos. ^^, 34, Nos. 64, 
65, and Nos. 78, 79 ; groups also of threes, as 
Nos. 40-42, Nos. 97-99, and Nos. 23-25 ; 
groups, again, of fours, as Nos. 71-74 and Nos. 
100-103 ; then, once more, a group of sixes, as 
Nos. 88-93 ; one group of sevens, as Nos. 
80-86 ; and finally a group of seventeen, in «. 
what are called the marriage sonnets (1-17). 
Now as each of these groups has something 
to say for itself, some story to tell, it seems 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 33 

impossible to treat the sonnets as merely- 
separate and individual ejaculations. ^ 

Akin to this view is Mr. Sidney Lee's in his 
recent Life of Shakespeare^ which contends 
that the Sonnets, with the exception of thirty 
addressed to the Earl of Southampton, are 
no more "than literary meditations on the in- 
firmities incident to human nature," under- 
taken after the cue had been given by other 
sonneteers. In other words, the poet had no 
personal convictions or feelings to express, but 
wrote imitatively in the manner of the times, a 
little better than others now and then, yet on 
the whole as a follower if not a plagiarist.' 
But on this hypothesis what are we to make of 
the fact that of the 154 sonnets at least 130 
are written in the personal tense ? — " I," " me," 
and "mine" are of constant recurrence; in some 
cases they recur five or six times, and gener- 
ally animated by great fervor and vehemence 

' A Life of William Shakespeare, by Sidney Lee. New York, 
the Macmillan Co., 1898. This book has a good deal of pleasant nar- 
rative in it, the result of careful research, but is no less marked by 
wild speculation, arrogant dogmatism, and, in what relates to the 
punning sonnets, repulsive coarseness. Its general effect is to de- 
grade Shakespeare veiy much in the estimation of the reader, as he 
is made to appear not only an unscrupulous plagiarist, but a sordid 
hanger-on of the great, and a gross-minded sensualist. Mr. Lee 
also pronounces some of the sonnets as positively " inane," an opin- 
ion that may be taken as a measure of his critical capacity. 



34 A New Study of 

of sentiment. Professor Dowden has said of 
the plays, that there is hardly anywhere a pas- 
sage to be found which is hard, cold-blooded, 
and indifferent, and the same may be said of 
the poems. They vibrate with human emo- 
tion, and reveal the man quite as much as they 
do the poet. That they are in manner and tone 
like other sonnets of the times, may be true, 
but they are also, in many respects, wholly 
unlike. Henry Brown and Professor Minto 
were so strongly impressed by the difference, 
as to argue that they were written on purpose 
to ridicule the prevailing modes. In Sonnets 
No. 130 and No. 21, for instance, Shakespeare 
says expressly that his Muse is not like the 
Muse of other poets, who are moved to write 
by artificial inspiration : he writes what he, 
feels, and not for mere show or pretence. He 
also says elsewhere that in order to meet the 
rivalry of other poets, and especially of one 
" better spirit " (Nos. 78-86), he avoided all 
decoration or false painting, trusting solely to 
the instincts of his genius. 

Mr. Lee apparently does not see that the 
poets of the time, Italian, French, and English, 
were children of the later Renaissance, who 
breathed the air of that reaction against the 
superstitions of the Middle Ages. That many 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 35 

of them resembled others was inevitable. 
What we are to look for in determining their 
respective merits is their originality in hand- 
Hng a common theme. " It is not the finding 
of new things," as Lowell finely observes, "but 
the making of something out of them after 
they are found," that produces literature of 
consequence. "Wherever Geoffrey Chaucer 
found anything directed to Geoffrey Chaucer, 
he took it and made the most of it. It was 
not the subject treated, but himself that was 
the new thing. Cela tu appartient de droit, 
Moliere is reported to have said when ac- 
cused of plagiarism. Chaucer pays also that 
usurious interest, remarks Coleridge, which 
Genius always pays in borrowing." So with 
Shakespeare : he found the sc nnet, but he filled 
it with the young Shakespeare. You read 
sonnets of others, and you say, ** How pretty ! 
how like Petrarch, or the fine French singers ! " 
but you read his, and while you gather the 
sweetness you breathe short with expectation. 
(2) A second theory of the Sonnets maintains 
that they are allegories, which conceal under 
common, every-day expressions a profound 
sesthetical or spiritual philosophy. It has had 
its advocates in Germany, but its most labored 
defender was the late General Hitchcock of 



36 A New Study of 

this country.^ He is ingenious and earnest, 
but does not carry his readers with him. One 
questions all along how a series of poems 
which do not even recognize the existence of 
a Supreme Being should yet be a storehouse 
of dogmas about the Holy Three in One, 
the divine Logos, and the Wonderful Rock. 
Hitchcock admits that he is mystical, and hard 
to be understood, and as far as you do under- 
stand him you do not see any difference be- 
tween his religious tenets and those universally 
accepted by other teachers. 

A more pretentious attempt at allegorizing 
the Sonnets is called the Genesis of Shake- 
speare's ArtJ^ It assumes that the Sonnets 
comprise but a single subject, the develop- 
ment of Shakespeare's genius from its earliest 
croppings-out to its final mastery, but the 
effort is to me not at all satisfactory : while 
the author is compelled to resort to a great 
many subtle tours de force to connect sonnet 
with sonnet, he lands you, in the end, in a 
veritable maze. You read, and read, and 
read, and when you finish you have no clearer 

' Re?narks on the Sonnets of Shakespeare, showing that they belong 
to the Hermetic class of writings, and explaining their actual mean- 
ing and purpose. Isaac Miller, New York, 1867. 

"^ The Genesis of Shakespeare^ s Art : A Study of his Sonnets and 
Poems, by Edwin James Dunning. Boston, 1897. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare zi 

notion of the genesis of Shakespeare's art than 
you had at the beginning. 

In fact, all the efforts that I have seen to 
detect a profound religious or aesthetic philos- 
ophy under what is else quite simple end in 
texts more obscure than the original text, and 
reading it is like walking out of a room partly 
lighted into a cellar completely dark. Even 
in poems professedly allegorical, like the Faerie 
Queene^ we soon lose sight of the story to at- 
tend to the verse. The allegory, at best, is a 
spurious sort of literature. It replaces the 
genuine pleasure of poetry, which is "simple, 
sensuous, and passionate," by the kind of pleas- 
ure one finds in a game of chess, that of inge- 
nuity, not of imagination. In the age of the 
Faerie Queene there was a prevailing fondness 
for it, and Shakespeare tried his hand upon it 
briefly in the vision of Cymbeline, in the feast 
and dance of The Tempest^ and perhaps he 
verged towards it in what are called the mar- 
riage sonnets, but his genius was essentially dra- 
matic : he looked at life and its issues in their 
reality, and even his fairy world adheres to the 
substantial and human. If his thought is often 
so very deep that you have to dig far down to 
get at its roots, or if he sometimes pursues a 
figure through the air until there is nothing 



38 A New Study of 

left but the figure, he commonly strikes In the 
open, and he strikes so hard at times that his 
blow gives back a ring of mystic bells, or a 
mutter of distant thunder. He plays the ma- 
gician, no doubt ; like Prospero, he deals with 
charms and enchantments, he controls the ele- 
ments, he calls up the mutinous winds, and 
sets roaring war between the green sea and 
the azured vault ; but none the less his "fury " 
is always the "minister" of his "reason"; 
fantastic as his scene may be, you know It 
is fantastic ; and when the work is done, he 
deliberately takes off his robes, and tells you 
" the revels now are ended, and these actors, 
as I foretold you, are melted into thin air." 

(3) The theory of the Sonnets, however, 
which seems to me the most misleading and 
pernicious, Is the most recent and widely 
received, — that which treats them as an ex- 
pression of the poet's unbounded love and 
admiration for a young friend. For many years 
after they were published, as Brandes remarks,^ 
all the commentators regarded them as ad- 
dressed to a woman ; a plausible inference 
because so much of the sonnet-writing of the 
time was taken up with amatory sentiment. As 

' Williaf>i Shakespeare : A Critical Study, by George Brandes. 
vol. i., p. 314. The Macmillan Co., New York, 1897. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 39 

Warton says : "In Italy the sonnet treated 
of the anxieties of love with pathos and 
propriety, and in England," he adds, " they 
rather tortured the passion with their com- 
parisons." Spenser, Sidney, Constable, Daniel, 
Drayton, Barnes, Barnfield, and others were 
full of devotion to the sex : and it seemed, 
therefore, altogether likely that Shakespeare, 
who in his plays became so fertile a creator of 
female types, should follow in the same path. 
It was not till 1 780, a century and a half after 
his death, that Malone and his friends began 
to assert that more than a hundred of them 
were addressed to a man. Even then the 
assertion did not command universal acquies- 
cence. As late as 1797 George Chalmers 
strenuously argued that they were written to, or 
meant for, Queen Elizabeth ; and not until 
about the beginning of the present century 
did a decided change of opinion take place. 
It was then generally conceded that at least 
126 of the Sonnets had a masculine friend of 
the poet's as their object. But who was he ? 
In 181 7 it was suggested by Drake,^ on the 
strength of the poet's friendship for the Earl of 
Southampton, to whom the Venus and Adonis 

* Shakespeare and his Times, by Nathan Drake, M.D. London, 
1817. 



40 A New Study of 

and the Lucrece were dedicated, that he was the 
chief if not sole inspirer of the poet. This hy- 
pothesis was sustained by Gervinus and Kreys- 
sig with more or less zeal. In 1832, however, 
Boaden, biographer of Kemble and Siddons, ad- 
vanced strong objections to it, and put forth the 
Earl of Pembroke as the man in the mask ^ ; 
he was approved by Mr. James Heywood 
Bright, who claimed to have discovered the er- 
ror as early as 1819.^ Since then a furious con- 
troversy has raged between the adherents of the 
respective earls. It is a controversy, as it has 
turned out, very like the battle of the Kilkenny 
cats, in which the contestants swallowed each 
other. Each party has demolished its adver- 
sary, while it has done nothing for its own 

' See Gentleman' s Magazine for 1832. 

^ Mr. Samuel Butler, on, the strength of the line in Sonnet 20, 
" A man in hew, all Hews in his controlling," has another candidate 
in one Mr. Hughes, or Hews, or Hewes, and runs a wild-goose chase 
in search of him. After saying that dozens of William Hugheses had 
existed in England from time to time, one of them even a Bishop, 
he cannot discover this particular W. H., but describes him thus: 
" He was more boy than man, good looking, of plausible, attractive 
manners, and generally popular. It is also plain that his character 
developed badly, and that, boy as he was, before the end of the 
year, he had got himself a bad name. He was vain, heartless, and I 
cannot think cared two straws for Shakespeare, who no doubt bored 
him : But he dearly loved flattery, and it flattered him to bring 
Shakespeare to heel [jzV] : Moreover, he had just sense enough to 
know that Shakespeare laid the paint on thicker and more delectably 
than any one else did, therefore he would not let him go." Butler, 
as writer and critic, is certainly withouC a peer. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 41 

cause. Both are wrong, and both are right, — 
wrong as to its own position, but right as to 
that of its opponent. 

In the Fortnightly Review for December, 

1897, Mr. WiUiam Archer demonstrated that 
the Sonnets were not addressed to the Earl of 
Southampton, but most hkely to the Earl of 
Pembroke ; but in the same review for February, 

1898, Mr. Sidney Lee demonstrates that they 
were not addressed to the Earl of Pembroke, 
but that many of them were addressed to the 
Earl of Southampton. Had the combatants 
paid any attention to the requirements of chron- 
ology, they would have seen that they were both 
barking up the wrong tree ; for if we suppose 
the Sonnets to have been written during the 
period I have fixed, — i. e., between 1582 and 
1592, — as Southampton was born in 1573, and 
Pembroke in 1580, they were neither of them 
of an age to attract the notice of the poet. To- 
wards the close of it, Southampton, who was a 
sort of general patron of literature, may have 
befriended the young playwright and won his 
gratitude, but nothing more. Certainly that 
gratitude would never have taken the peculiar 
form it assumes in the Sonnets, — that of cele- 
brating his amours. Southampton was among 
the richest noblemen of the day. He owned 



42 A New Study of 

estates in various parts of the kingdom, dressed 
with great magnificence, fared sumptuously, 
took part in pubHc affairs and expeditions, and 
was ever surrounded by a retinue of ladies and 
gentlemen devoted to games and gayeties. If 
Shakespeare had undertaken to paint him in 
verse, something of all this splendor would 
have appeared, but it is all overlooked in the 
Sonnets, and the place supplied by coarse flips 
and familiarities. 

As to Pembroke, born in 1 580, he was either a 
child in arms, or running about in short clothes. 
Even if we suppose the Sonnets were written at 
any time before the mention of them by Meres 
(1598), he was yet a lad at college, and not 
likely to have attracted the attention, much 
less the unbounded admiration, of a busy actor 
in London. On the other hand, if we suppose 
that they were not composed until about the 
time of their publication (1609), Shakespeare 
was then at the height of his activity as a play- 
wright, producing such masterpieces as Muck 
Ado, Twelfth Night, As You Like It, Hamlet, 
Othello, Macbeth, and Lear, and not at all likely, 
when his mind was heaving like an ocean with 
these great conceptions, to turn aside to dabble 
in little dirty pools like those implied in both 
the Southampton and Pembroke theories. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 43 

The best confutation of the view that the 
Sonnets are tributes of friendship to any young 
fellow of the time is a resume given of them 
by both Professor Dowden and Mr. Furnivall/ 
which is so diverting that I am sure the reader 
will forgive me for reproducing one at some 
length. Each of them assumes throughout, 
" for convenience' sake," that the person ad- 
dressed may always be called Will, an enormous 
assumption in itself, but let that pass.^ 

" Shakespeare begins," says Mr. Dowden, " by urging 
Will to get married," but as I shall consider this marriage 
theory hereafter I shall dismiss it for the present. " This 
Will is the pattern and examplar of all human beauty 
(Son. 19) * ; he unites in himself the perfection of man 
and woman (20). Although this is extravagant praise, it 
is the simple truth (21) : he has exchanged love with the 
poet (22), who must needs be silent in the excess of his 
passion (23), and who yet cherishes in his heart the image 
of his friend's beauty (24), and holds still more dear the 
love from which no unkind fortune shall ever separate 
him (25). Here affairs of his own compel Shakespeare 
to a journey which removes him from Will (26, 27). 
Sleepless by night, and toiling by day, he thinks only of 
the absent one (28) ; grieving over his own poor estate 
(29) ^ and the death of friends, but finding in the one 

' See introduction to Shakespeare^ s Sonnets, by E. J. Rolfe. Har- 
per and Brothers, New York, 1892. 

- The numbers quoted are those of the Quarto. 
^ Which he does not, but rather rejoices in it. 



44 A New Study of 

beloved amends for all (30, 31) ; and so Shakespeare 
commends to his friend his poor verses as a token of his 
affection, which may survive if he himself should die 
(32). At this point the mood changes, for in his absence 
his friend has been false to friendship (33).' Indeed, if 
Will would let the sunshine of his favor beam out again, 
that would not cure the disgrace. Tears and penitence 
are fitter (34) ; and for the sake of such tears Will shall be 
forgiven (35) ; but henceforth their lives must run apart 
(36) ; Shakespeare, separated from Will, can look on and 
rejoice in his friend's happiness and honor (37), singing 
his praise in verse (38), which he could not do if they 
were so united that to praise his friend were self-praise 
(39) ; separated they must be, and even their loves be no 
longer one. Shakespeare can now give his lady, even 
her he loved, to the gentle thief ; for, wronged though he 
is, he will still hold Will dear (40) ; what is he but a boy 
whom a woman has beguiled (41) ? and for both, for 
friend and mistress, in the midst of his pain, he will try 
to feign excuses (42).'' 

" Here there seems to be a gap of time. The Sonnets 
begin again in absence, and some students have called 
this, perhaps rightly, the Second Absence (43). His 
friend continues as dear as ever, but confidence is shaken, 
and a deep distrust arises (48) (jumping, at a bound, from 
43 to 48). What right has a poor player to claim con- 
stancy and love (49) ?* He is on a journey which 
removes him from Will (50, 51). His friend perhaps 
professes an unshaken loyalty, for Shakespeare now takes 

^ For which the false friend was not disdained at all. 

' There is no feigning of excuses here, only a bit of humor- 
ous badinage. 

^Although, according to Mr. Dowden's dates, this poor player was 
the author of the best plays that had ever yet been written. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 45 

heart and praises Will's truth (53, 54)/ believing that his 
own verse will keep forever that truth in mind. He will 
endure the pain of absence, and have no jealous thoughts 
(57, 58),' striving to honor his friend in song, better than 
ever man was honored before (59), in song that shall 
outlast the revolutions of time (60). Still he cannot 
quite get rid of jealous fears (61), and yet, what right 
has one so worn by years and care to claim all a young 
man's love (62) ?' Will, too, must fade, but his beauty 
will survive in verse (63). Alas, to think that death will 
take away the beloved one (64). Nothing but verse can 
defeat time and decay (65)." For his own part, Shake- 
speare would v/illingly die, were it not that dying he 
would leave his friend in an evil world (66)/ 

"Why should one so beautiful live to grace this ill 
world (67) except as a survival of the genuine beauty of 
the good old times (68) ; yet beautiful as he is, he is 
blamed for careless living (69) ; surely this must be 
slander (70)/ Shakespeare here returns to the thought 

' Overlooking 52, in which Will is described as a most precious 
jewel, and whether bad or not bad, a perfect blessing which, being 
had, gives scope to triumph, and, being lacked, to hope. 

'■^ Skipping 55, 56, which say that Will's praises shall outlive 
" marble and the gilded monuments of princes," and " find a place 
in the eyes of all posterity." 

^ Where nothing is said of either years or care, but simply that he is 
weakened artistically, and maimed by his inveterate selfishness. 

^ Does that mean that verse will keep the poor darling alive ? 

^ The poor dear, — being one of the richest and most popular 
noblemen of the day, what a sad fate it was for him to be left alone 
in a bad world ! 

^ Mr. Dowden passes over the fact that this friend who is here 
said to present " a pure, unstained prime," having passed through 
the various ambushes laid for the young, either unassailed, or, if 
assailed, triumphant over all, is the same friend whose conduct in 



46 A New Study of 

of his own death : ' when I leave this vile world,' he 
says, ' let me be forgotten ' (71, 72) ; ' and my death is 
not very far off' (73) ; 'but when I die my spirit still 
lives in my verse ' (74).* A new group seems to begin 
with 75. Shakespeare loves his friend as a miser loves 
his gold, fearing it may be stolen (fearing a rival poet ? ). 
His verse is monotonous and old-fashioned (not like the 
rival's verse ? ) (76) ; so he sends Will his manuscript 
book unfilled, which Will may fill, if he please, with verse 
of his own ; Shakespeare chooses to sing no more of 
Beauty and of Time ; Will's glass and dial may inform 
him henceforth on these topics (77). The rival poet 
has now won the first place in Will's esteem (78-86).'^ 
Shakespeare must bid his friend farewell (87). If Will 
should scorn him, Shakespeare will side against himself 
(88, 89) ; but if his friend is ever to hate him, let it be at 



previous sonnets is pronounced a "trespass," a " sin," a "sensual 
fault," a " twofold violation of honor " (Son. 35, 41). 

' Giving as a reason for his depression the unworthiness and fail- 
ure of his writings, although he had just said (55, 56) that his verse 
would give life to any one till the day of judgment. 

'Mr. Dowden jumps here from 78 to 86, simply saying that 
the rival poet had "won the first place in Will's esteem," but he 
does not say what place Will had won in the poet's esteem, giving 
way to an outbreak of the most fulsome adulation that was ever 
uttered. Shakespeare tells Will (if we keep to Mr. Dowden's 
theory) that he is the poet's one source of inspiration, which lifts 
his ignorance as high as the highest learning (78) ; that other poets 
had discovered his secret and were reducing him to silence (79) ; 
that Will's excellence is as wide as the ocean on which every bark 
may ride (80) ; that it is past all praise (82) ; that he needs no deco- 
ration or painting (83) ; and that simply to say to Will, " You are 
you alone," will win for his style a universal and endless admiration 
(84), in fact, that Will's praise is beyond all expression, so that in 
listening to it one can only exclaim helplessly, " 'T is so, 't is true." 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 47 

once, that the bitterness of death may soon be past 
(90) ; he has dared to say farewell, but his friend's love 
is all the world to him, and the fear of losing him is 
misery (91) ; indeed, he cannot lose his friend, for death 
would come quickly to save him from such grief ; and 
yet, Will may be false and Shakespeare never know it 
(92),' so his friend, fair in seeming, false within, would 
be like Eve's apple (93).^ Yet, it is to such self-contained, 
passionless persons that nature entrusts the rarest gifts 
of grace and beauty, but vicious indulgence will spoil 
the fairest human soul (94) ; so let Will beware of his 
youthful vices, already whispered by the lips of men 
(95), True, Will makes graces out of faults, but this 
should be kept within bounds (95).' Here again, per- 
haps, is a gap of time. Sonnets 97-99 are written in ab- 
sence, which some students perhaps rightly call the Third 
Absence. These three sonnets are full of tender affec- 
tion, but at the close of 99 allusion is made to Will's 
vices, the canker in the rose. After this followed a 
period of silence ; in 100 love begins to renew itself, and 
song awakes. Shakespeare excuses his silence (loi) : 
his love has grown while he was silent (102). His 
friend's loveliness is better than all song (103). Three 
years have passed since their first acquaintance ; Will 
looks as young as ever, though time must be insensibly 
altering his beauty (104), Shakespeare sings with a mo- 
notony of love (105). All former singers, praising 
knights and ladies, only prophesied concerning Will 
(106). Grief and fear are past : the two friends are 

' Though he had described it in the loudest terms several times. 
^ /. e., a source of all evil. 

"" Will's very shame is sweet and lovely ; naming his name blesses 
an ill report. 



48 A New Study of 

reconciled again/ and both live forever united in 
Shakespeare's verse (107). Love has conquered Time 
and age, which destroy mere beauty of face (108). 
Shakespeare confesses his errors, but now he has re- 
turned to his home of love (109) ; he will never wander 
again (no) ; his past faults were partly caused by his 
temptations as a player (in) ; and he cares for no 
praise or blame except that of his friend (112)." 

" Once more he is absent from his friend, but full of 
loving thought of him (113, 114). Love has grown and 
will grow yet more (115). Love is unconquerable by 
Time (116), Shakespeare confesses again his wander- 
ings from his friend ; they were tests of Will's con- 
stancy (117) ; and they quickened his own appetite for 
genuine love (118), Ruined love rebuilt is stronger 
than at first (119) ; there were wrongs on both sides and 
must now be mutual forgiveness (120). Shakespeare is 
not to be judged by the report of malicious censors 
(121) ; he has given away his friend's present of a 
table-book because he needed no remembrancer (122) ; 
records and registers of time are false ; only a lover's 
memory is to be wholly trusted, recognizing old things 
in what seem new (123) ; Shakespeare's love is not based 
on self-interest, and therefore is uninfluenced by fortune 
(124) ; nor is it founded on external beauty of form or 
face, but is simple love for love's sake (125)^ Will is 
still young and fair, yet he must remember that the end 
must come at last (126)." 

' The third or fourth time. 

* This rendering is so inadequate that it is almost a perversion. 
He says that his friend, and nobody else, shall ever be his only 
standard of right and wrong. 

^ Yet he had extolled it in the most extravagant phrases. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 49 

Professor Dowden does not follow Will 
through the black depths of the Dark-Lady in- 
trigue, as Mr. Furnivall does to his utter 
horror : and surely we have had enough of 
this farrago of nonsense, contradiction, syco- 
phancy, and degradation. Our only wonder 
is, that a writer of such insight and accom- 
plishment as Professor Dowden should allow 
it to go forth as the sum and substance of these 
Sonnets, and an outline of Shakespeare's life. 

It must have been, doubtless, from some foul 
source of this kind that Hippolyte Taine 
drew,^ when he pronounced Shakespeare 

" one of the losels of his time, associating with licentious 
young nobles, and addicted to the sweet abandonment 
of love without restraint, having many mistresses, and, 
among them, one at least like Marion Delorme, from 
whose meretricious delusions he could not and did not 
care to escape. He was not only the willing, but de- 
lighted slave of his passions all his life, with now and 
then a prick of remorse, which gave him pain, but 
brought no reformation." 

What is most offensive in these caricatures 
and most to be deprecated is, that they present 
the poet in an aspect so different from that we 
get from his plays, where, great as he was in 
imaginative fancy, discernment of character, 

^History of English Literature, vol. ii., chap, 4. Paris, 
Hachette & Co., 1866. 

4 



50 The Sonnets of Shakespeare 

and wit, he was still greater, as Coleridge con- 
tends, in clear-sighted, solid, and imperturbable 
judgment. In his management of his plots, in 
his discernment of the minutest shades of 
character, in adaptation of words to persons 
and situations, his good sense appears supreme. 
He falls into serious faults at times, he makes 
mistakes, and he exaggerates, but these are 
exceptions to his proverbial excellences which 
it surprises us to encounter. Even in the 
moral sphere, amid the impurities that pervade 
social life, he never confounds vice with virtue, 
nor asks us, indulgent as he may be to human 
weakness, to sympathize with the ignoble, the 
degraded, or the false. Why, then, seek to 
interpret the Sonnets in a sense which the 
greater works avoid ? 



PART first: 

A NEW STUDY OF THE SONNETS. 



51 



PART first: 

A NEW STUDY OF THE SONNETS. 

PUTTING aside these attempts at inter- 
pretation which are more or less 
abortive, let us see if we cannot reach better 
results by a simpler and more scientific method. 
That such results are desirable I assume in 
spite of the high authority of Mr. Swinburne, 
who warns all intruders off the premises with 
a magisterial solemnity of manner that would 
be awful if it were not a little ludicrous. After 
speaking in a bumptious way " of the prepos- 
terous pyramid of presumptuous commentary, 
that has long since been reared, by Cimmerian 
speculation and Beotian brain-sweat of scio- 
lists and scholiasts," he takes a gulp of breath 
(much needed under such a burden of words), 
and then adds that " no modest man will hope 
and no wise man will desire, to add to the 
structure, or to subtract from it, one single 
brick of proof or disproof, — of theorem or 
theory,"^ — meaning, if he means anything, 

' A Study of Shakespeare, by Algernon Charles Swinburne, 
p. 62. New York, Worthington, 1886. 

53 



54 A New Study of 

that the old mud-heaps of nonsense are for 
some reason or other sacred, and must be 
allowed to remain undisturbed. 

Nevertheless, despite the frowns of so emi- 
nent a judge, I venture to suggest that much is 
to be said and much ought to be said on the sub- 
ject, if for no other reason than to rescue the 
greatest of poets from the mass of misinterpreta- 
tion and obloquy which has been shovelled upon 
him by silly and conceited scribes. Every 
man who uses the English language, which he 
inherits from his ancestors and hopes to trans- 
mit to his descendants, is naturally eager to 
vindicate, or to see vindicated, the greatest of 
its representatives. 

Let me say at the outset, that in proceed- 
ing to a new study of the Sonnets I began with 
the text itself, — as it is, — and not with any 
theory, outside of the text, which it was hoped 
the text would confirm. With pen in hand I 
wrote out a prose paraphrase of each sonnet 
as it came, marking in the margin (ist) the 
person or thing to which it seemed to relate, 
either real or imaginary ; (2d) the various 
emotions expressed, whether of love or 
hate, of hope or despair; and (3d) the pre- 
dominant thought which generally comes as a 
climax in the closing couplet. Of course, in 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 55 

making these paraphrases, I varied the lan- 
guage when clearness of meaning appeared to 
render it necessary, but in no case substituted 
a wholly new text except by confessed con- 
jecture. Of course, too, as my aim was 
exegetical and not sesthetical, I was often com- 
pelled to a painful sacrifice of the poetry of a 
passage to its apparent sense. This is justified 
by the rules of scriptural and classical exegesis. 
I had not proceeded far in this way when 
two things forced themselves upon my atten- 
tion, — the first was that some few of the 
sonnets had no discernible connection with 
any of the others, and might be put aside as 
solitaries or independents ; and the second 
was that those which had an evident connec- 
tion arranged themselves, of themselves, into 
groups, of which the affinities almost leaped 
to the eyes. I say that they arranged them- 
selves of themselves, meaning that they came 
together without any preconceived theory or 
purpose of my own. I had nothing in my mind 
beforehand which I wished to prove, beyond a 
desire to discover if anything could be proved 
by an honest and self-consistent compilation. 
In recognizing this spontaneity of adjustment 
I met with but one difficulty, — the fact that, as 
the sonnets are addressed sometimes to ab- 



56 A New Study of 

stract and sometimes to concrete persons or 
things, it was not always easy at a glance to 
say to which of these categories this or that 
particular sonnet belonged. Thus there was a 
possibility that in making a choice between 
the two my judgment might be at fault ; but 
of that the reader, having the whole case 
before him, will decide for himself. 

The divisions that formed themselves in this 
spontaneous way may be arranged as follows : 

LA central or explanatory sonnet. 

II. A few sonnets which cannot be gathered 
into a fold with any of the others, and stand 
out as so many Independents : nine in all. 

III. A group forming a somewhat continu- 
ous poem, which is commonly said to be a 
persuasion to a young man of genius and 
promise to get married, but which has, as I 
take it, an entirely different object. 

IV. A series of Love Poems, descriptive (a) 
of an early and ardent attachment, (b) of a sep- 
aration from the beloved, {c) of the pains and 
pleasures of absence, and (</) of a young poet's 
first impressions, under these circumstances, of 
the great world. 

V. Another group of Love Poems, but of 
another kind, depicting the origin, progress, 
and end of an irregular amatory relation, and 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 57 

which may be called " The Episode of the 
Dark Lady." 

VI. And, finally, a group relating to the 
poet's communion with a Higher or Tenth 
Muse as he calls it, meaning the personified 
Spirit or Genius of Poetry in its highest con- 
ception. This group reveals {a) the youthful 
aspirations of the poet, (d) his efforts to re- 
alize them, (c) the obstacles he encounters, 
and (d) his ultimate success and triumph over 
all difficulties. 

I shall treat of these divisions in turn, but I 
think that any intelligent and unprejudiced 
reader will see at once that they are natural, 
and not artificial or forced, and that they in- 
volve only incidents which might occur in the 
career of any writer of distinction. They are 
derived directly and exclusively from the 
Sonnets themselves without reference to any 
outside history save a few general facts of the 
poet's life which all writers concede to be well 
known and well verified, as, for instance, that 
he was born in the country, that he was married 
there at a very early age, that he removed to 
London and became an actor and writer of 
famous poems and plays — simple data which 
everybody has a right to take for granted in 
his studies of the poet's works. 



58 A New Study of 

I. A CENTRAL AND EXPLANATORY SONNET. 

Among the sonnets which I had put aside 
as Independents there was one that impressed 
me very much as pecuhar in its sentiment and 
position. The versions commonly given of it 
seemed to me extremely puerile ; and yet there 
was a version of it that came to me, which, 
without changing a line or syllable in it, and 
by simply changing the point of view, rendered 
it singularly luminous. It seemed to me to de- 
clare directly the purposes of the author in 
writing, or, in other words, to tell why he 
wrote at all. Thus it presented itself to me as 
a sort of guide in the interpretation of the 
Sonnets generally ; but what impressed me still 
more was that this sonnet, either by design 
or accident, was the central sonnet of the se- 
ries as a whole. Dividing 154 by 2 we get 
"j^, which is, strange to say, the number of this 
sonnet. By whom the original numbering 
was done we do not know, but it is certainly 
not an extravagance to suppose that the writer 
himself may have purposely affixed this 77 to 
a sonnet which he considered in some degree 
explanatory. That sonnet reads as follows : 

Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear, 
Thy dial how thy precious minutes waste ; 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 59 

The vacant leaves thy mind's imprint will bear, 
And of this book this learning mayst thou taste. 
The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show 
Of mouthed graves will give thee memory ; 
Thou by thy dial's shady stealth mayst know 
Time's thievish progress to eternity.* 
Look, what thy memory cannot contain '' 
Commit to these waste blanks, and thou shalt find 
Those children nursed, deliver'd from thy brain. 
To take a new acquaintance of thy mind/ 
These offices, so oft as thou wilt look. 
Shall profit thee and much enrich thy book. 

What, I asked myself, do these words mean ? 
" Probably," wrote Mr. Steevens many years 
ago, "that sonnet was designed to accompany 
the present of a book of blank paper " (to one 
of the poet's patrons, either the Earl of South- 
ampton, or the Earl of Pembroke, or some- 
body else). "This conjecture," solemnly 
echoed Mr. Malone, " this conjecture is exceed- 
ingly probable " ; and the commentators who 
came after them have repeated the sagacious 
guess as if nothing more could be said. Mr. 
Furnivall, however, was a little more specific, 
and added that " the present consisted of a 
little book, a dial, and a pocket looking-glass, 

' Rolfe refers here to " thievish minutes" of All's Well, ii., i, 169. 

^ Shakespeare, I think, often uses the ejaculation " look " in the 
sense of the French voila. 

° " To take a new acquaintance" is equivalent to take n&vf note 
or knowledge of anything. 



6o A New Study of 

combined In one ; " by what curious mechanism 
they were combined the learned expositor did 
not say ; only he was sure that they " were com- 
bined in one." This rare instrument it Seems 
was to be sent to one of the poet's patrons, 
some nobleman of the day, with a request in so 
many words that he should write in the blatTk 
book, in order to ascertain and so to show the 
world what sort of notions were passing in his 
noddle. In our day an impertinence of this 
kind would procure the perpetrator of it a 
sound box of the ears, or a lusty kick on the 
seat of his trousers, and I do not doubt that 
the culprit in the more violent times of Queen 
Elizabeth would have received a more impetu- 
ous repulse. 

Dowden elaborately expounds the poem 
thus : " Beauty, Time and Verse formed 
the theme of many of Shakespeare's sonnets ; 
but now that he will write no more, he com- 
mends his friend to the glass, where he may 
discover the truth about his beauty ; to the dial, 
that he may learn the progress of ti'ine ; and to 
this book, which he himself (not Shakespeare) 
must fill " ; a rather unseemly hint on the part 
of a poet who in the next poem celebrates his 
friend as his highest source of inspiration and 
of that art, "born of thee," which has lifted 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 6i 

his rude ignorance into the loftiest regions of 
knowledge. 

Was ever a more outr^ construction given 
to the plainest language, than in all this? 
The poet speaks throughout the sonnet of " thy 
glass," ''thy dial," which could scarcely refer to 
a glass or dial which he was going to send to 
another person as a present : the " thy," there- 
fore, must have had some other meaning, which 
becomes obvious if we suppose that the poet 
is sitting in his own room, communing with 
himself, his writing materials before him, and 
about to put down his thoughts of the mo- 
ment. Imaginative as he was, he yet took 
his suggestions from what was immediately 
around him, and he said to himself : " That mir- 
ror yonder, hanging on the wall, informs thee 
how thy good looks are wearing away ; that 
Dutch clock ticking on the mantelpiece shows 
thee the rapid passage of time " (both import- 
ant lessons) ; "but these vacant leaves destined 
to receive the imprint of thy mind, will form a 
book and give thee a taste of a different kind of 
learning." What was that ? The poet thought- 
fully replied : " Thy glass, revealing thy 
wrinkles as they come, will remind thee of the 
' mouthed graves ' that open on all sides of 
human life ; thy dial will mark the stealthy 



62 A New Study of 

steps with which time measures out its thiev- 
ish progress to eternity ; but these waste leaves, 
when thou shalt commit to them the thoughts 
that memory cannot retain, will deliver the 
children nursed in thy brain into actual life 
and thereby furnish thee with a new acquaint- 
ance with thy mind. Moreover this service, as 
often as it shall be repeated, will add to thy 
proficiency as a writer and greatly improve thy 
future productions." In fewer words, what 
the poet declares is, that his Sonnets were 
written as records of his passing meditations, 
and also as studies to be used in future labors. 
And could anything be more simple and natural 
than that ? Every literary man, I suppose, 
has done the same thing, with the same pur- 
pose. In my own small way, I know that I 
have a hundred times leaped out of bed at 
night to make a note of some thought or image 
that seemed to me to be worth the preserving. 
Mr. Irving's editor (A. Wilson Verity), in a 
note to this sonnet,^ came near discerning its 
real purport when he said that it advised 
" three things : (i) Look into your glass and 
you will see how your beauty fades ; (2) look 
to your dial and you will realize how time flies ; 
and (3) write your thoughts from time to time 

' Irving's Shakespeare, vol. viii,, p. 444. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 63 

on the vacant leaves," or " waste blanks " of 
this volume, and then, reading over what you 
have written, you will realize what has gone on 
in your own nature, and appreciate the double 
change, " outward and inward." But unfortu- 
nately Mr. Verity did not see that Shakespeare 
was talking to himself and not intruding his 
advice upon anybody else, and so he missed the 
solution. 

The keeping of note-books was a common 
practice of the times, as we may learn from 
Bacon's Promus and other authorities. Shake- 
speare's addiction to it appears not only in 
this sonnet, but from several allusions to it 
in the plays. Hamlet, for instance, in a mo- 
ment of singular absorption, called for his tab- 
lets that he might write down the ghostly 
communications of his father. That Shake- 
speare also held such records as hints or germs 
of future labors, we may infer from the 
great number of coincidences in word, image, 
or situation, — between the sonnets and their 
author's poems and plays, some of which I 
shall hereafter cite.^ 

What is strongly confirmatory of this view 

' I have counted more than two hundred of these sin:iilarities, as 
pointed out by the critics, — some of them nearly identical, others 
involving words of peculiar meaning, not common at the time. 



64 A New Study of 

as to the exclusive personal bearing of the 
Sonnets, is the entire absence from them of 
any reference to contemporary public events. 
Living at an epoch of intense and widespread 
agitation, — one of the most stirring known to 
history, — when the circumnavigation of the 
globe and vast maritime discoveries had im- 
parted a new aspect to the earth ; when the 
destruction of the Spanish Armada was the 
greatest naval catastrophe that had ever oc- 
curred ; when the incessant religious wars of 
the continent deluged nearly all Europe in 
blood ; when the brutal execution of Mary 
Queen of Scots, and the massacre of St. Bar- 
tholomew, aroused fiery and universal animosi- 
ties, and when the movement of religious 
opinion had separated large masses of human 
thought forever from the creeds of the Middle 
Ages, — the poet never so much as hints at 
any of these moral and social convulsions ; he 
confines his lines to incidents and situations 
that immediately concerned his own individual 
feelings and the narrow circle in which they 
moved ; and while his plays are a many-colored 
mirror of the intense, active, bustling, and tu- 
multuous throes of human life, involving kings 
and dynasties and the rise and fall of nations, 
and of vast societies in all their magnificence 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 65 

and import, showing his deep interest in such 
events, the Sonnets run on in their simple 
way, undisturbed and scarcely rippled by a 
breath of the surrounding commotions. 

II. THE INDEPENDENTS OR SOLITARIES. 

Tnese are only nine in number, and of no 
great interest. Two of them (145 and 126) 
are not sonnets at all, as sonnets were 
then understood, but octosyllabic verses in con- 
secutive rhymes. The first (145) plays upon 
a poor jest in a rather doggerel style, and 
the second (126) is so confused that nobody 
as yet has been able to give it an intelligible 
explanation. Some critics think it refers in 
some way to Cupid, but do not tell us in what 
way, and others to some mystic personification 
of the relations of Nature and Art, but go no 
farther than that. 

Two others of these Independents are dif- 
ferent but similar versions of an old Greek 
fable about Cupid and the Nymphs. It was 
for a long time unknown where Shakespeare 
had found the original, but in 1878, a learned 
German, Herr Hertzberg, disco'^red it in the 
Byzantine Marianus, an epigrammatist of the 
fifth century after Christ. From him it was 



66 A New Study of 

turned into Latin several times during the 
sixteenth century, and so made its way into 
England, where it was put to use by Surrey 
and Shenstone as well as by Shakespeare. 

The rest of the Independents (19, 26, 63, 
81, 122) are obviously addresses to particular 
friends, extolling their virtues and promising 
them immortality, in the manner of the times. 
One of these (26) is so like in its tone, 
aiii4 even expression, to the dedications of 
'^enus and. Adonis ,and of the Lucrece to the 
Earl of Southampton, that he has been sup- 
posed to be its object. The resemblance is 
not, however, so clear as to place the point 
beyond doubt. But if we assume that it was so 
addressed, it is the only instance in which we are 
able to identify any of the sonnets with a then 
living and distinguished personage. Another 
of these Independents (81) may, perhaps, bear 
upon that belief of some of the Humanists 
which identified all life with the earthly life. 
Shakespeare says to his friend :/" Whether you 
or I survive the other here, your name will never 
be lost to memory, while I shall be dead to all 
the world and forgotten. The earth will fur- 
nish me no more than a grave, but you shall 
be entombed in the eyes of men. Your monu- 
ment will be my verse, which will be read when 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 67 

all who now breathe are dead." Thus death 
seems to be represented as final doom, from 
which the fame given by the poet will be the 
only escape. This kind of prediction, how- 
ever, was so common in those days that a 
single instance of it can hardly be cited as 
positive evidence in the case. 

III. A PLEA FOR POETIC OR CREATIVE ART. 

It is generally held by commentators that the 
first seventeen sonnets of the Quarto were 
addressed to a young friend of the poet, in 
order to persuade him to get married. Not 
one of them, so far as I can discover, — saving 
the allegorists, — seems to have considered it 
possible to arrive at any other construction. 
Some, indeed, have carried this view so far as 
to name the very persons and dates involved. 
They say that the young friend concerned was 
the Earl of Pembroke, whose mother and 
other relatives became exceedingly anxious, 
when he was about seventeen years of age, to 
ally him to a granddaughter of the famous 
Lord Burleigh, though she was still younger 
than he.^ Not succeeding in their efforts 
(doubtless owing to the reluctance of the gay 

• See the whole story in Mr. Tyler's Introduction to his fac-simih 
edition of the Quarto. 



68 A New Study of 

bachelor to be captured), they appHed to 
the poet — who is alleged to have been an 
intimate acquaintance — to make use of his abili- 
ties as a mentor; which he did, not, how- 
ever, by way of personal intercession, but by 
writing him poems. The attempt was a 
failure ; for it appears from other sonnets, 
which are regarded as having been addressed 
to the same person, that the mentor himself 
got entangled in one of the youth's intrigues 
and did not come out of it with credit. 

(i) The Worth of this Version. 

As to this marital theory, we are not strongly 
impressed in its favor when we find that the 
word " marriage " does not occur in any of the 
poems said to have been written to commend 
this relation. " Married," as an adjective, 
appears once, where it is used as a figure for 
the " concord of well-ordered sounds " (Son. 8, 
11. 5, 6).^ Neither do those essential compo- 
nents of the married state, husband and wife, 
come upon the stage at all : we read of a 
" husband," but then it is of a note in a song, 
which is called " the husband " of another note, 
and we read of a "wife," but she is already a 

' It is here used as in Troilus and Cressida, when " the married 
unity and calm of States " is spoken of. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 69 

" makeless wife," ^ thatis, a widow ; but together 
or as connected one with another they are not 
seen. Stranger still, the prospective bride 
and blessing of the lad is not so much as 
hinted at in any way. On the contrary, she 
is shuffled out of sight by a bevy of other 
maidens who have no right to be there. One 
would naturally suppose in a case of this kind 
that a poet, and that poet Shakespeare, would 
have lavished some of his finest metaphors on 
the elected lass, but the father of Juliet, Perdita, 
Imogen, and Beatrice had nothing to say in 
the premises. At the same time he had a great 
deal to say about those other damsels, repre- 
sented not only as charming, but as eager, 
shame to them, to reciprocate the lad's ad- 
vances. He tells of many maiden gardens 
which would like to bear him living flowers 
(Son. 16, 11. 5-9). It is only for him to choose, 
and he is apparently urged to choose without 
discrimination. He is urged, too, with such 
persistency that the poet stands forth more as 
an advocate for free love than as the champion 
of an exclusive and sacred institution. Indeed 
many critics, forgetful of their theory, adduce 
lines 162-174 of Venus and Adonis as parallels 

1 " Makeless wife" in the Quarto means here a mateless wife, or 
wife without a mate. 



70 A New Study of 

to this reading of the Sonnets.^ Bosworth 
and Boaden call them " expansions," and 
Dowden's first note, followed by Irving's edi- 
tor, says that they are treatments of the same 
theme. For myself, I had always fancied that 
the relations of Venus and Adonis were pre- 
cisely opposite to those of marriage : but we 
must live and learn, when writers have theories 
to defend. 

It is true that we encounter such words and 
phrases as ** issue," " breed," '* getting a son," 
*' producing one's semblance," " this fair child 
of thine," and others of the sort, which imply 
marriage, but not necessarily so or always so, 
because they may imply also irregular sex rela- 
tions. A man may be a father, and so have 
" issue," and " produce his semblance," etc., 
without having consulted the authorities of 
Church or State for sanction. 

' " Torches are made to light, jewels to wear, 
Dainties to taste, fresh beauty for the use, 
Herbs for their smell, and sappy plants to bear : 
Things growing to themselves are growth's abuse : 

Seeds spring from seeds and beauty breedeth beauty ; 

Thou wast begot ; to get it is thy duty. 

" Upon the earth's increase why shouldst thou feed, 
Unless the earth with thy increase be fed ? 
By law of nature thou art bound to breed. 
That thine may live when thou thyself art dead : 

And so, in spite of death, thou dost survive, 

In that thy likeness still is left alive." 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 71 

Then, in the second place, the arguments 
addressed to the young fellow by his poetical 
mentor are not on the whole very effective. 
Six or seven of the poems are so irrelevant 
that a stranger to the literature of the sub- 
ject might read them attentively without the 
slightest suspicion that they related to mar- 
riage. Under the circumstances alleged we 
should expect the poet to advise the boy 
that, being at the head of a rich and powerful 
family, having wide social connections and 
serious political responsibilities, it was to the 
last degree important that he should form a 
desirable matrimonial alliance, in order to 
keep up its dignity and power, and to do so 
while in the vigor of his years. But these 
considerations are not touched upon at all, 
and the learned attorney in verse goes wander- 
ing about in a way not calculated to impress a 
-youngster more full of passion than philosophy. 
j An acute lawyer or a politician would have 
told him more to the purpose in seventeen 
j minutes than the poet has told him in sevjen- 
teen labored and somewhat complicated poeti- 
cal productions. It is no wonder then that he 
threw them to the dogs, while he proceeded to 
amuse himself with the poet's own perplexi- 
ties. Certainly it was a most anomalous effort, 



72 A New Study of 

which, designed expressly to commend a cer- 
tain condition, does not call it by name, nor 
refer to any of its characteristic features. 
Shakespeare was a good logician as well as a 
master of rhetoric, and his shortcomings here 
are a pretty strong proof that the critics have 
been following a wrong trail. j 

( 2 ) A More Probable Solution. 

What, then, are we to make of these poems 
which have been so almost universally con- 
strued as didactics addressed to an individual 
to persuade him to a special act ? My answer 
is, that they are a work of the imagination of 
a far more general aim than is implied in this 
theory. They are figurative, not literal, and, 
while they nominally advise a young man of 
beauty and accomplishments to multiply and 
perpetuate himself by the natural process of 
procreation, they really mean that he shall 
multiply and perpetuate himself by the spiritual 
process of creation, or by the exercise of his 
faculties in verse-writing or poetry. Let us see. 

By the use of "thee," "thou," and "thine" 
many times in thirteen sonnets, and of " you " 
or "yours" nearly as many times in four sonnets, 
we are left in no doubt that a person is meant 
to be addressed ; but as that person is without 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare H 

name, place, or vocation — in the air — as it 
were, — we have a right to infer that he is 
rather abstract and imaginary than real. We 
are told that he is '' young," " rich in youth," 
or " in his golden prime," i. e., new on the 
scene ; we are told that he is beautiful, the 
word beauty or some equivalent being applied 
to him more than twenty times ; and we are 
told that he is endowed with the richest 
" graces," ample enough to enable him, if he 
likes, to furnish others from his treasury. 
But we are also told that he is utterly indifferent 
to these bounteous bestowments ; that he leads 
a life of solitary self-indulgence, looking no 
farther than his bright eyes can see, and 
having traffic or intercourse only with himself. 
He is severely reproached with this abstention, 
as a cruel wrong done to himself, and a 
reckless disappointment of the hopes of man- 
kind. He must change his course, and change 
it at once, lest he should fall into utter decay 
and oblivion. 

Our poet opens his theme by referring to a 
few instances of change which had directed his 
attention to the subject and to the youth in- 
volved. 

Son. 12. When I remark the passage of the hours 
upon the clock, and see the bright day sink into dismal 



74 A New Study of 

night ; when I behold the violet past its prime, with its 
sable color silvered over with v/hite ' ; when I see the 
foliage of the forest, which lately sheltered the herds 
from heat, now fallen and scattered ; when I see all the 
green growths of summer gathered up in sheaves and 
borne away on a bier in their white and gristly beards — 
I am led to ponder upon thy Beauty, and to think how it, 
too, must go into the wastes of time, like all things sweet 
and fair, which lose their qualities and die as fast as 
other things appear and grow : while there is no defence 
against Time's ravages save "breed," or the production 
of that which will withstand him when he has carried 
thee away. 

It is plain that the word "breed" in the 
couplet here is not used in the usual sense of 
the engendered, but in a more derivative sense, 
inasmuch as the instances adduced are taken 
from the vegetal world, where it has the 
significance given it when we say that " use 
breeds habit," that "money breeds interest," 
that " public means do public manners breed," 
or even that " nuns breed scarcity." It is be- 
cause the critics have not marked this dis- 
tinction that they have been somewhat misled 
in their interpretations. 

Then the poet accuses his youth of a 

'The Quarto reads, "and sable curls all silvered o'er with 
white," which I think would read better thus : "its sable color sil- 
vered o'er with white." Hamlet (i., 2, 242) speaks of a "sable 
silvered." 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 75 

negligence, which is both a cruel wrong to 
himself and others. 

Son. I. We desire increase from the fairest Creatures 
in order that, thereby, the Rose of Beauty, or Beauty 
in its highest expression, may never cease ; but as the 
riper shows of it disappear, some tender successor may 
keep it alive at least in memory. But thou, contracting 
thy vision to the narrow range of thine own bright eyes, 
dost feed thy flame of light by a self-substantial fuel (or 
a fuel of the same substance as itself), and thereby 
create a famine at the very source of abundance. In 
that thou art thine own foe, for thou art now a fresh 
ornament of the world, an early herald ' of the spring, 
and yet dost bury thy bud in its own contents, 
which is a saving that makes a waste. * Pity the world 
by meeting its expectations, or else be a kind of glutton, 
who consumes what is due to mankind whilst he is alive, 
and will be due even after he is in his grave.^ 

Pushing his charges still further, the poet 
protests that his friend is even destitute of 
common affections. 

Son. 10. For shame ! and confess thou hast no love 
for any when thou art so improvident for thyself ! 
Even if we should grant that thou art beloved by many, 

'The Quarto has, "the only herald to the spring," which is an 
obvious misprint for " an early herald." 

"This recalls a passage in Romeo and Juliet (i., i, 210) which 
says, " and in that sparing makes huge waste." 

^ The Quarto has, "to eat the world's due, by the grave and 
thee," which would he clearer if read, " by thy grave as thee," i. e., 
in death as in life. 



76 A New Study of 

it is very evident that thou dost not return that love. 
Thou art possessed, instead of it, by a " murderous 
hate," which does not hesitate to conspire against thy- 
self, and to ruin that beautiful habitation which it should 
be thy principal aim to keep in the best repair. Oh, 
change thy course in this that I may change my opinion 
of thee ! Shall hate be more fairly lodged than gentle 
love? Be as gracious and kindly in thine acts as thou art 
in thy presence, or, at least, be generous to thyself (for 
my sake if not thine own), that thy beauty may still live 
in thy productions, as it does in thy person. 

Unless he does so the poet condemns the 
youth as ungrateful to nature, to himself, and 
wholly without excuse. 

Son. 4. Unthrifty Loveliness, why dost thou expend 
upon thyself that legacy of beauty bequeathed to thee 
by nature ? Nature does not give at all, but lends, and 
she lends freely because she hopes for an equal liberality 
of return.* O beautiful Niggard, why dost thou abuse 
the largess given thee only to give back again ? Unprof- 
itable Usurer, why dost thou revel in such wealth and be 
yet unable to subsist upon the proceeds ? Having traffic 
with thyself alone, thou dost defraud thyself of real 
benefit, and when nature shall take thee away, what 

' A similar thought is expressed in Measure for Measure (i., i, 36): 
' ' Nature never lends 
The smallest scruple of her excellence 
But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines 
Herself the glory of a creditor, 
Both thanks and use." 
One would scarcely call this recommendation of liberality a motive 
to marriage. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 11 

acceptable account canst thou leave of thine administra- 
tion ? Thy beauty unused (that is, unexpressed), will be 
entombed with thee, whereas, if it had been expressed, 
it would survive to be thine executor, or representative. 

And now is the time to begin the change, 
the poet adds. 

Son. J. Look into thy glass,* and tell the face reflected 
there that now is the time to reproduce that face, which, 
if not done, thou dost beguile the world, and withhold 
a blessing from some mother.* There is no subject, as 
yet untouched, that would disdain thy husbandry : 
or who is there so foolish in his self-love that he will 
allow himself to be entombed without caring for a suc- 
cessor ? As the glass above referred to was thy mirror, 
so shouldst thou be a mirror of nature, who recalleth in 
thee the lovely April of her own springtime, as thou (by 
a proper care of it) shalt be able, through the windows 
of thine age, and in spite of wrinkles, to see thy golden 
years again. But if thou list (or desirest) not to be 
remembered, die in thy solitariness (or without the inter- 
course with nature commended here) and thine image 
Avill perish with thee. 

' This sonnet plays upon the word " glass," I think, using it first 
for the mirror which reflects the young man's face, and then for 
the young man himself, as a mirror of nature, A use of it similar to 
the latter occurs in the Rape of Lticrece (1. 1758): 
" Poor broken glass, I often did behold 

In thy sweet semblance my old age renewed." 
^ The locution here is curious: " Unbless some mother," i. e., 
withhold from some aspect of nature and life the cultivation that 
might be given to it by thy genius. 



78 A New Study of 

Then the poet tells his friend why he is to 
act immediately and without delay. 

Son. 5. That lapse of the hours which has gently 
framed thy form, on which all men gaze in admiration, 
will soon turn tyrant to it, and reduce to ugliness 
the beauty which is now so superlative. Time never 
rests, as we see it leading summer on to hideous winter 
where it is destroyed. The flow of sap is checked by 
frost, the lively leaves wither, the fair landscape is 
snowed under, and bareness reigns everywhere. If, 
then, there has been no distillation of the growths of 
summer, — "A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass," 
— beauty will be bereft of its effects, and neither it nor 
any remembrance of it remain.' But flowers, when they 
are distilled, although they should encounter the severi- 
ties of winter, lose only their appearance, while they 
survive in substance. 

In this sonnet and the following the process 
of distillation, by which the dead matter of 
flowers, etc., is converted into fine odors and 
essences, is used as a figure or symbol of the 
manner in which art lifts any object or aspect 
of nature into a higher form. It is also used 
in several of the plays, as in As You Like It 
(iii., 2, 134), where it is said that all the graces 
of nature— Helen's cheek, Cleopatra's majesty, 
Atalanta's better part, and Lucretia's modesty 

•The Quarto has, "But if thou live, remembered not to be," 
which seems to be contradictory, and "live" is probably a misprint 
for " list." Sonnet 58 has, " Be vi^here you list." 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 79 

— have been " distilled " into the one body of 
Rosalind. So in Troilus and Cressida (i., 3, 
350), Nestor remarks that the man who is 
to go forth and meet Hector must be a man 
" distilled from all our virtues"; again in Henry 
V, (iv., I, 5), where Henry observes that " there 
is a soul of goodness in things evil, would men 
observingly distil it out," and Jonson used 
the same figure in The Poetaster of Shake- 
speare's own writings, as " distilled " from 
his judgment. There is fitness, if not felicity, 
in the image when applied to the creative 
faculty which turns the rudest material into 
forms of beauty ; but when it is pushed a little 
farther, as in the Midsummer Night's Dream 
(i., I, 76), and procreation itself is characterized 
by the term, it seems to me, though remotely 
pertinent, to be carried to an extreme. 
The poet continues : 

Son. 6. Do not then allow the rugged hand of winter * 
to invade thy summer before its products shall have 
been distilled or made the most of. Make sweet some 
recipient, enrich some theme with the treasure of thy 
beauty, before that beauty shall be self-killed. It is not 
a forbidden usury which prospers those who are willing 
to accept the loan. Create another self, or, ten times 
better, create ten in the place of one. Ten reproduc- 
tions of thyself would be ten times more desirable than 
' The Quarto has " ragged " hand, meaning " rugged." 



8o A New Study of 

thyself alone, if the ten refigured thee ; for in that event 
what could death itself do, if thou shouldst depart and 
leave thyself living in such a progeny ? Do not be ob- 
stinate, therefore, as thou art altogether too fair to be- 
come a conquest of the grave and make the worms thine 
only heirs. 

Son. 2, When forty such winters shall besiege thy 
brow, and dig deep trenches in that field of beauty, the 
proud livery of youth, which is looked upon with so 
much rapture now, will be a tattered garment, held in no 
esteem.* Then, if thou shouldst be asked what has be- 
come of thy beauty, and where the rich accomplishments 
of former days are gone, to reply that they are to be 
found within thy deep-sunken eyes would be a blasting 
shame and a self-praise utterly meaningless. How much 
higher praise would the proper use of thy beauty deserve 
if thou couldst answer, " This fair child of mine, proving 
his beauty as my successor, discharges my debt, and is 
a complete defence." Moreover, in this wise, thou 
wouldst be new made when thou art old, and see thy 
blood warmly flowing even after it had grown cold. 

By " child of mine " the author means the 
offspring- of the mind, not an infrequent figure 
with him. In Sonnet No. ^"j he describes his 
writings as " children nursed in his brain " 
and brought into life by his pen. Jonson, 

' It will be seen in this sonnet that Shakespeare, as others in his 
time, considered a man old when he was but forty years of age : his 
brow strongly "wrinkled," his eyes "deep-sunken," his blood 
" cold," and his general appearance that of a worn-out garment, of 
no further worth. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 8i 

referring to Shakespeare himself, in the fa- 
mous preface to the FoHo of 1623, uses the 
same figures : 

Look, how the father's face 
Lives in his issue ! Even so the race 
Of Shakespeare's mind and manner brightly shines 
In his well-turned and true filed lines. 

Jonson, in The Poetaster, also makes "every 
syllable Shakespeare writ, the issue of his 
self." 

So7i. ij. Oh, that you were master of yourself and 
knew that you are your own only so long as this present 
life continues.^ Therefore it is I conjure you to prepare 
for the coming end, by the reproduction of your sem- 
blance in some worthy form. In that way, the Beauty 
you hold as a lease will never come to an end, but, after 
your decease, you will live again in one that bears the 
impress of your genius. Who but a fool would allow 
so fair a house as that in which you dwell to fall into 
decay, when a little honorable husbandry might pre- 
serve it against the strongest gusts of winter, and even 
against the eternal cold of death ? None, none, but a 
reckless spendthrift. Ah, my dear friend, as you had a 
father (or predecessor) let your son (or successor) say 
the same.' 

' Irving's edition (vol. viii., p. 435) construes this as : " Oh, that 

you were Absolute, — Independent of time, Free from the conditions 

that fetter men," which seems to me just the reverse of what the 

poet wishes, i. e., that his friend should know his dependence upon 

his conditions. 
6 



82 A Nev/ Study of 

Next the poet asks his friend If It be from 
fear of failure In his attempts to marry his 
genius to Mother Nature, that he persists in his 
"single life" or isolated inactivity. If so, it is 
foolish, for the cases are not analogous. 

Son. g. Is it the fear of wetting a widow's eye, as in 
an ordinary marriage, that thou dost persist in thy fruit- 
less isolation ? ' Ah ! that would be foolish, indeed, and 
a mistake of the position ; for, if thou shouldst happen 
to depart without issue, it is the world and not a 
mate that would wail thy loss. The whole world is thy 
widow, and will ever weep that thou hast left no form of 
thee behind, when every private widow may see her 
husband's shape in her children. Mark, what a do- 
nothing spends in the world merely changes its place, 
and the world continues to enjoy it : but the waste of 
beauty is final. If not expressed, it is destroyed. There 
is, therefore, no love in that bosom which commits such 
a shameful murder on itself as that which thou dost 
commit. 

Son. II. As fast as thou shalt wane in thine own 
person, just so fast shalt thou grow in one of thy pro- 
ductions, and grow away, too, from the narrow point of 

' " Single life " is used commonly as the antithesis of married life, 
but it is also often used for "one," "individual," or " alone," as 
when we speak of a single combat, a single effort, a single kiss, a 
single verse, or a single sorrow. "All single and alone," says Timon, 
"yet an arch-villain, keeps him company" (v., I, no). " Thy sin- 
gle and peculiar life is bound," etc. {Hamlet, iii., 3, 11). "Now, 
Clifford, I have singled thee alone" (III. Hy. VI., ii., 4, i). " So 
hath my lord dared him to single fight" [Ant. and Cleo., iii., 7, 
31). 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 83 

departure. The fresh vigor that thou hast expended 
shall still be thine when thou shalt have passed beyond 
thy youth. In this direction lie beauty, v/isdom, and 
increase, — while in the opposite are folly, old age, and 
annihilation. If all men were so minded as not to care 
for the future, the times that are would cease, and, in a 
few years, civilization itself come to an end. Let those 
then whom Nature has not destined to a grand fruition 
(harsh, featureless, and rude as they are) perish in their 
barrenness ; but thou hast been more richly endowed 
than even the best, and thou shouldst acknowledge the 
bounteous gift with a corresponding bounty. Nature, 
indeed, has carved thee out as one of her models, with 
the intention that thou shouldst multiply and diffuse 
copies of thee before the original be lost. 

Even the great sun itself loses its wor- 
shippers after it has passed its meridian glory : 

Son. 7. Lo ! when the Sun lifts his resplendent head 
in the east, how every eye below doth homage to his as- 
cending majesty ; when he has climbed the steep-up 
heavenly hill, like a strong youth in middle age, adoring 
looks still follow his golden pilgrimage : but when, 
having attained his highest pitch, his weary car reels ' 
downwards (like feeble age that totters to its fall), the 
eyes that were before faithful turn aside, and look else- 
where for another day. So thou, when thou hast got 

' Dowden quotes Ro7neo and yiiliet (ii., 3, 3), " and flecked dark- 
ness, like a drunkard, reels forth from day's path," which is a 
natural image ; but to suppose that the sun itself, — the cause of 
day, — should reel from the day, is absurd. There has been an in- 
terchange of the last words of lines 10 and 12 — day ^.n^L way — 
which, rectified, restores the sense. 



84 A New Study of 

beyond thy noon, wilt die unnoticed unless thou art 
followed by another sun.' 

Finally, there is one consideration of para- 
mount importance, — the necessity of harmo- 
nizing the mental powers among themselves, 
and in reference to the environment. 

Son. 8. Musical as thou art, when thy speech is 
heard, why should thou listen to other music with ap- 
parent sadness ? Sweet does not war with sweet, and 
joy delights in joy ; then how canst thou love that 
which thou receivest not gladly, or how receive with 
pleasure that which in reality is an annoyance ? If the 
concord of well-attuned sounds — sounds married one 
to the other by a proper adjustment — offends thine 
ear, it must be because it is a rebuke to thee for 
wasting, in single indifference, the endowments which 
would enable thee to bear a part in the general harmony. 
Mark how one strain,^ the sweet support and further- 
ance of another, melts into the whole, resembling a 
happy family of sire, mother, and child, who sing their 
pleasing notes in unison ! Their song, though without 
words, shows that while in reality they are several, in 

' It can scarcely be doubted that Shakespeare, in the last line here, 
has been guilty of the bad taste of punning on the word son : as he 
tells his friend that as the sun begets another sun, he ought also to 
beget a son. Yet what he means is clear, — that as the sun loses 
its worshippers when it sets, so he will lose his admirers unless he 
be succeeded, after death, by a son, that is, some product of his 
genius. 

^ The Quarto has "string," but, as the music is supposed to be 
vocal, I regard it as a misprint for " strain." 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 85 

effect they are but one. This should remind thee that 
acting by thyself alone thou art of no effect, and in 
truth a nobody. 

Up to this point, or to the close of the thir- 
teenth sonnet, the poet has pointed at many 
illustrations of the decay and renovation which 
pervade both external and human nature. 
But he has expressed little of the kind of ren- 
ovation which is produced in the realm of art 
or poetry. In the four following sonnets, 
therefore (or in Nos. 15, 16, 17, and 14), he 
becomes more explicit, and, after recapitulating 
what he had said in Sonnet 12, (but with spe- 
cial reference to man,) declares openly that our 
future life is constituted and preserved by 
Verse. We live only in our works or in our 
fame.^ 



' I am disposed to think that Shakespeare, like many of the ad- 
vanced minds of the later Renaissance, accepted the belief that our 
future life was here on earth, and not in another world. It was an 
inheritance from the Hebrev/ Scriptures, which taught nothing of a 
life beyond the grave, and from the Greek poets, who, like Moschus, 
held that death was an eternal slumber. Partly, also, it was a reac- 
tion against the dogmas of the Church which tui-ned life on earth, 
despite its sunshine and its smiles, into a Sahara of sighs, and sobs, 
and tears. Compare Skepticism of the Italian Renaissance, by John 
Owen ; New York, The Macmillan Co., 1893 ; and The Civilization 
of the Renaissance in Italy, by Jacob Burckhardt ; Swan, Sonnen- 
schein & Co., London, 1892. 

A similar belief has been celebrated in quite recent times in a poem 



86 A New Study of 

Son. i^. When I consider that every growing thing 
maintains its perfection but for a minute, that this huge 
stage of the world exhibits nothing but shows (phenom- 
ena, we now call them), on which the remote and silent 
stars may have some influence ; when I perceive that Men 
themselves flourish only as the plants do, cheered on or 
checked by the self-same skyey influences, who flaunt in 
their youthful day, yet decreasing after a while, and then 
finally wear their bravest states even out of memory : 
then the conception of this inconstancy of stay reminds 
me of your wealth of youth, and how wasteful Time, in 
earnest rivalry with decay, itself, labors to reduce its 
fresh and brilliant day into the depths of the sullied 
night. But, being in love with you, and at war with this 
odious enemy, I strive to repair this damage by my pen, 
and, as he takes from you, to engraft you anew, or to re- 
store the attributes which have been destroyed/ 

But the poet goes on to ask his friend, who 

which resolves our future life into an identity with that of " The 
Choir Invisible," or 

' ' With those immortal dead who live again 

In minds made better by their presence — live 

In pulses stirred to generosity, 

In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn 

For miserable aims that end with self. 

In thoughts sublime, that pierce the night like stars, 

And in their mild persistence urge man's search 

To vaster issues."* 
* I do not find that any of the critics who hold to the marriage 
theory of these sonnets has been able to work this sonnet into 
his scheme. Dowden is wisely silent, Rolfe, of course, the same, 
and Irving's able editor runs away. None the less the assertion of 
the Poet is positive and clear : Whatever Time may do, he says to 
his friend, my Verse shall defeat, and so repair every damage. 
* The Lege7id of Jubal and Other Poems, by George Eliot, 1874. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 87 

is so abundantly able to defend himself, why 
he does not make use of his own faculties in 
the battle. He writes : 

Son. 16. Wherefore do not you yourself make war 
upon this destructive tyrant, Time in a more effec- 
tive way than I can, and fortify yourself, even in the 
midst of your decay, by means more fruitful than my 
barren rhymes ? At this moment you stand on the top 
of happy hours, or in the forefront of favorable oppor- 
tunities, when many a maiden subject as yet untouched, 
which would willingly bear you imperishable flowers, 
— flowers more like yourself than any painted picture 
or external description could ever be. No existing pen- 
cil,' nor my pupil pen, can cause you to live in the eyes 
of mankind, either as to your outward beauty or your 
inward graces, as you are, and it is only by your own 
effort that you will yourself again really live [give away 
yourself, that is, incorporating your spirit in some work 
of art], and you will preserve yourself in it, drawn by 
your own sweet skill. ^ 

Son. 77. What, indeed, will future ages care about 
my verse, even if it were filled with descriptions of your 
high deserts (and not be a tomb in which they are hid- 
den or only half shown). If I could really describe the 
beauty of your looks, or tell in adequate numbers of all 
your graces, the age to come would simply say this poet 
lies ; such heavenly characteristics are seldom seen in 
earthly persons. My papers, yellowed with age, would 
be scorned, like the chatter of an old man, more 

' The Quarto has, " This, Time's pencil," which I can only trans- 
late as above. 

'^ How inapplicable this word skill is to the accepted theory ! 



88 A New Study of 

garrulous than truthful, and your real, rightful worth 
be regarded as " the overstrained metre of an antique 
song." But if some child of your own brain should 
exist at that time you should have a twofold immor- 
tality — in it, as in my rhyme.' 

Son. 14. But why do I dwell on all this ? Certainly 
not because I pluck my judgment from the stars. Al- 
though I have a smattering of astronomy, it is not suffi- 
cient to enable me to foretell great public events, eijher 
for good or evil, like plagues or deaths, or the qualities 
of the seasons. I cannot appropriate to each person his 
share of what is about to befall, nor inform princes how 
it is going with them by aught that I may find predicted 
in the sky. No ; I derive what I say from the observation 
of those constant stars, — thine eyes (those telltales of 
the soul), and I read in them this truth: " That if thou 
turnest thyself from thy mere self in order to add to 
nature's store, thy truth and beauty will thrive together, 
otherwise (/. ^., if thou dost persist in thy solitary course) 
I may safely prognosticate that both thy truth and thy 
beauty will meet their date and doom. They will per- 
ish alike and thou shalt be heard of no more." 

This is all I have to say of these sonnets, 
which,'^ whether my construction of them be 
right or wrong, stand by themselves, and da. 
not affect the others. I will add, however, 

' There would seem to be a contradiction between the first part of 
this sonnet, where the poet depreciates his poetic power, and the 
last, where he boasts of it ; but it should be remarked that in the 
first part he merely deplores the inadequacy of his pen to the par- 
ticular subject, but not its general power as a means of conferring 
immortal fame. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeaf e 89 

that when I read them first in the Hteral sense 
the critics accept, and then in the figurative 
sense I have tried to explain, they leave upon 
me widely diverse impressions. In the former 
sense they seem trivial and without interest, 
and, though they are Shakespeare's, scarcely 
worth a second perusal. The marriage of an 
unknown young man, three hundred years ago, 
does not stir the blood to any pitch of excite- 
ment, but when I read them in the latter sense, 
they are lifted into a generality of meaning in 
which they become at least edifying and in- v 
structive. What the poet enforces has the ( v 
same value now that it, had then, and a value S 
which will continue so long as he continues to 
be the poet par excellence. i" 

IV. A YOUNG LOVE-TIME. ^ 

No intelligent scholar who should happen 
to fall upon a sonnet like that I am about to 
cite, without knowing the authorship of it, 
would hesitate for a moment as to its personal 
meaning, supposing it to have a personal 
meaning. The sonnet says : 

Son. 25. Let those who live under favorable stars 
boast of their public honors and their proud titles, if 
they like, but I, whom fortune deprives of such distinc- 
tions, leaving me wholly unknown, none the less rejoice in 



90 A New Study of 

that which I honor at the same time. The favorites of 
great princes, who spread their fair leaves like the mari- 
gold only in the sunshine, can have no respect for them- 
selves, when at the mere whim of another they must 
perish in the midst of their glory. So painstaking war- 
riors, made famous by their military prowess, if once 
defeated after their many victories, drop from the rolls 
of fame and their great achievements are forgotten. 
How happy then should I be, who love and am beloved, 
with an affection that on neither side will ever decay. 

Two things are at once manifest in reading 
this poem : the first is that the author of it was 
a person of lowly and obscure condition ; and 
the second, that he enjoyed a reciprocated 
love which was an ample solace for his other 
deprivations. His ode was not a complaint 
against adverse fortune, as Professor Dowden 
strangely remarks, but just the reverse, a self- 
congratulation on a " low estate," which ex- 
empted him from the vicissitudes that are apt 
to fall upon those more highly favored, while 
it enabled him to delight in an immutable affec- 
tion. He does not, he says, hold his happiness 
like the recipients of court favor at the caprice 
of another, nor does it depend like the fame 
of a warrior upon an accident ; it is assured 
and permanent. 

It is rendered antecedently probable, by what 
I have said before as to how much of the sonnet 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 91 

writing of that day related to women, that 
this "beloved" object was a woman. Other 
objects, the virtues of patrons and the high 
qualities of personal friends, or abstract con- 
ceptions of religion and philosophy, had their 
devotees ; but women as the inspirers of real 
or fictitious passion far outnumbered all others.^ 
Shakespeare was, more than any poet of his 
age, and we may say of any age, susceptible to 
the female charm ; his poems and plays alike 
overflow with the love sentiment ; and there- 
fore I assume that the love of this sonnet was 
the love of a woman. Or take another one 
nearby. No. 21, as an example. 

So7i. 21. It is not with my Muse as it is with that of 
others who are moved to make verses by an artificial 
beauty and who consequently ransack the very heavens 
for epithets to raise their " fair one " to a level with all 
other " fairs." They bring together a " couplement " or 
mass of ambitious comparisons with the sun or moon, with 
the earth, with the rich gems of the sea, — with the first- 
born flowers of April, and, in fact, with everything rare 
that is hemmed in by the huge rondure of the skies ; — but 
I do not do so : I love truly and therefore I write truly, — 

' Main, in his Treasury of English Sonnets (p. 283), refers to col- 
lections by Spenser, Sidney, Constable, Daniel, Barnes, and many 
others, of which the several titles, Asirophel and Stella, Delia, 
Diana, Phillis, Ccelia, Licia, Diella, Fidessa, Chlo7'is, etc., pro- 
claim their characters. They were all of them more or less taken 
up with women either real or ideal. 



92 A New Study of 

or without resorting to fantastic exaggerations ; and you 
that read me may honestly believe that the object of 
my love, though hot as brilliant, perhaps, as the golden 
candlesticks of the heaven, is yet as fair as any mother's 
child. Let those whose likings are founded upon com- 
mon repute say more, if they will, but I am not a chap- 
man in the market who extols his wares for mere effect. 
I am writing honestly of what I know, and not from what 
I choose to invent. 

Can we doubt that the poet was here writing 
of a woman ? No poet then or since, writing of 
men, ever indulged in the extravagance of dic- 
tion which Shakespeare disclaims. They never 
made suns, or moons, or gems, or flowers, of 
the masculine gender ; they only praised their 
nobler and general qualities in sober if exalted 
terms ; but when they sang of women they lav- 
ished upon the darlings all the bright and beauti- 
ful images they could bring together, extending 
their adoration to every part of the person : to 
eyes, lips, ears, hair, teeth, and cheeks, and they 
would have included even the little toes, if those 
sacred appendages had ever been exposed by 
any mischance to profane masculine vision.^ 

' Constable furnishes a good specimen of this sort of rapture in 
his Diana, where he says : 

" My lady's presence made the roses red, 
Because to see her lips they blushed for shame, 
The lily-leaves for envy pale became, 
And her white hands this envy in them bred ; 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 93 

Further on the poet continues his disclaim- 
ers. He says : 

So7i. 130, The eyes of my mistress are not like the 
sun, nor are her lips as red as coral ; if snow be white, 
her breasts are dun, and if hairs may be called wires, 
such wires grow on her head.* I have seen roses, red, 
white, and damask, but no such roses bloom on her 
cheeks ; and in some perfumes there is a more delightful 
fragrance than in her breath. I love to hear her speak, yet 
I know that there are strains of music sweeter than the 
sounds she makes; and though I have never seen a 
goddess walk, I have no doubt there are goddesses who 
could tread the ground with more grace ; and yet, by 
heaven ! I swear she is just as handsome as any other ; 
she who is belied by the false comparisons in vogue. 

A sonnet Hke this could not have been ad- 
dressed to a lady of rank, or in high society, 
because such ladies were accustomed to a very 
different style, and would have been offended 

The marigold its leaves about doth spread, 
Because the Sun's and her power is the same, 
The violet of purple color came, 
Dyed in the blood she made my heart to shed. 
In brief, all flowers from her their virtue take. 
From her sweet breath their sweet smells do proceed." 
' The practice of Elizabethan poets, in comparing women's hair 
to wire, owing perhaps to something peculiar in the coiiTure, is in- 
conceivable to us, but it was quite common. Mr. Irving's editor, 
who, by the way, detects the connection between the 130th and the 
26th sonnets, cites examples of this figure from Spenser, from Daniel, 
from Peele's Praise of Chastity in the English Helicon, from Hero 
and Leander, and from other sources. 



94 A New Study of 

by Its qualified and negative praise. It might, 
however, very well have been addressed to a 
person in the poet's own condition, to whom 
he pays the greater honor by disclaiming for 
her those artificial compliments which seem to 
have been needed by the others. " You, my 
darling," he says, " are altogether more lovely 
than any of those whose charms require to 
be painted or bolstered up by such ridiculous 
inflations." 

Interpreting these three sonnets as ad- 
dressed by a rustic lover to his rustic sweet- 
heart, may we not conclude from the little we 
know of the poet's real life, and not from 
guesses in the void, that if they related to any 
person in particular it must have been to Anne 
Hathaway, then or soon to become his wife ? 
Unless the poet was already a gay Lothario 
of the fields we have no right to connect them 
with any other woman ; while, connecting them 
with her, we open the way to a series of real 
love poems which are among the most tender 
and touching to be found in our literature. 

Poor Anne has suffered badly at the hands 
of the critics, and especially those of our coun- 
tryman, Mr. Richard Grant White, who pur- 
sues her with an almost personal spite ; and yet 
he has no better reason for it, that I can see, 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 95 

than Shakespeare's disparagement in some of 
his plays, of alHances, " misgrafted in respect 
of years." Because the Duke, in Twelfth 
Night, says, " Let still the woman take an 
elder than herself ; so wears she to him, so 
sways she level on her husband's heart," it is 
inferred that Shakespeare thought the same, 
deriving his opinion, not from a general ob- 
servation of life, but from his own individual 
experience. It is, however, an extremely haz- 
ardous method of getting at a dramatist's con- 
viction, to impute to him as his own what he puts 
in the mouths of particular persons in particu- 
lar situations. As well say that Shakespeare 
held and approved of all the queer sallies of 
Falstaff, or Sir Toby, or Parolles, as that he 
coincided with the Duke in his utterances 
about the importance of equality of age in mar- 
ried couples. Even if he did, it did not pre- 
vent him afterwards from approving the mar- 
riage of his daughter to one about as much 
younger than herself as he was younger than 
Anne. 

Because Anne was the daughter of a yeo- 
man, and not of one of the gentry ; because she 
was some six or seven years older than her 
swain, — because their marriage was secret and 
hurried ; and because after two or three years 



96 A New Study of 

of cohabitation the husband went off to Lon- 
don to Hve there for a long time, it has been 
taken for granted that Anne was some coarse 
country wench who inveigled him into a pre- 
mature marriage, of which, he soon repented, 
and then left her for life. /There is not a par- 
ticle of historic evidence for this conclusion : 
On the other hand, there is some evidence that 
he visited her, once a year at least, which was 
as often, doubtless, as the state of travel ren- 
dered practicable then ; while he may have had 
other opportunities for seeing her in the occa- 
sional tours of his theatrical company through 
the provinces. Be that as it may, we know 
that in London he lived frugally and worked 
hard, — that his first earnings were devoted to 
buying for Anne and the children the best 
house in the best street of his native village ; 
and that when he had gotten together a com- 
petency, he returned to Stratford to live with 
them for the rest of his days ; and he did so 
when there were the strongest reasons why he 
should remain in London and not return to 
Stratford. He was highly esteemed and pros- 
perous in London, surrounded by friends, many 
of them of great distinction ; his plays were 
the leading entertainment in Court circles ; in 
one month, May, 16 13, at the wedding of the 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 97 

Princess Elizabeth, no less than seven of them 
were given at Whitehall : Henry IV., Merry 
Wives, Jtdius Ct^sar, Othello, Mtich Ado, The 
Winter s Tale, and The Tempest, — the latter a 
fresh production.^ 

On the other hand, a great change of opin- 
ion had taken place at Stratford, in the inter- 
val of his absences. In his youth, when his 
father was the principal magistrate of the town, 
theatrical entertainments were frequent and in 
good repute ; but twenty years afterwards, at 
the time of his return the more fanatical Puri- 
tans had got possession of the place and 
forbidden them under heavy penalties. War- 
wickshire had become the centre of the anti- 
theatrical crusade ; and two of its most 
powerful preachers thundered away from their 
pulpits against the stage and all its upholders. 
Yet in the face of this obloquy the poet 
returned thither to sojourn with his family. 
It was then and there, too, we have every rea- 
son to believe, that he wrote those tender 
romances. The Winter s Tale, Cymbeline, and 
The Tempest, which are all so suffused with 
a gentle sunset glow of serene and kindly 
affection. 

As I view it, the historic probabilities, so far 

1 Halliwell-Phillipps, ii., 87. 



98 A New Study of 

from confirming the Inferences of Mn White 
and others, would rather show that the woman 
of Shakespeare's first love was worthy of his 
affection. At that time the Influence of the 
Renaissance or revival of learning had not yet 
spent its force. Men, we know, in their eager- 
ness for knowledge would sell the coats off 
their backs and go without food to get a 
glimpse of a printed book or of a rare man- 
uscript. Ladies in high station prosecuted 
learning with an irrepressible zeal ; Queen 
Elizabeth spoke and read the ancient as well 
as the modern languages, and when she went 
down to the universities could answer the ad- 
dresses of the learned dons in Greek or Latin 
as she pleased. Her rival, Mary, Queen of 
Scots, surrounded herself by learned men, was 
familiar with French literature and herself 
wrote French poems ; and Lady Jane Grey 
was not only the favorite but the foremost 
pupil of Roger Ascham, the greatest teacher of 
his time. Among ladies of the middle classes, 
as we read in private Memoirs, the pursuit of 
knowledge was indefatigable, while the same 
avidity marked to some extent the inferior 
social classes. I read the other day an account 
of a young Italian woman, of the middle ranks, 
who at that time made herself so complete a 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 99 

mistress of the Greek that she was able to 
lecture on Greek Literature in the Greek lan- 
guage at various universities.^ Anne Hatha- 
way was not, perhaps, of this select sort ; she 
was a simple rustic maiden, but as such not ne- 
cessarily ignorant or unread ; nor wholly indiffer- 
ent to the accomplishments of her boyish lover. 
We should offend no actual history or authentic 
tradition if we should suppose her to have been 
the "beloved" of the earlier sonnets. If she 
was not the model of Perdita, " the prettiest 
low-born lass that ever ran on the greensward," 
she might easily have been the original " sweet 
Anne Page," simple, modest, amiable, and of 
charm enough, aside from her father's fortune, 
to attract three or four suitors at once, and of ' 
spirit enough to run away with one of them 
without getting her parents' consent. Then, 
again, as she was older than her boy husband, 
she might, instead of repelling him, ultimately 
have exercised over his eager and impetuous 1 
impulses a salutary control, as quiet and gen- j 
tie as that of a summer's day. Does he not ' 
intimate as much when he writes : On c: Ji 

Son. 18. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? 
Thou art more lovely and more temperate [that is, 
more equal]: rough winds do shake the darling buds of 

' This was in LittelVs Living Age, but I have mislaid the reference. 



loo A New Study of 

May, and summer's lease hath all too short a date. 
Sometimes the eye of heaven is too hot, while at others 
its gold complexion is dimmed, and every fair thing 
often loses its fairness. But thy summer is the summer 
of love, which is perennial and does not fade. Besides, 
and here the enthusiastic and self-confident poet breaks 
out : Death shall never be able to boast that thou wan- 
derest in his shade, because I have put thee in my verses, 
destined to endure as long as men can breathe, or age 
can see, and thou shalt live in them ! 

As the lad repeated these Hnes to the girl, 
either at Shottery, her home, or in his father's 
house, she, if she was the woman I take her to 
have been, threw her arms about him and gave 
him some hearty kisses, exclaiming, " Oh, Wil- 
lie, boy ! if ever there was a poet you are one ; 
but, alas, you make too much of my good looks, 
for remember that I am older than you are, 
and beauty is a thing that soon decays." 

"Does it?" he reflected, as he went away 
thoughtfully, — and the next time they were 
alone he gave her his version of that question. 

Son. 104. Dear friend, to me you never can be old, 
because your beauty is the same as it was when first I 
looked into your eyes/ The cold of three winters [they 
had been intimate, perhaps married, for three years, it 
would seem] has shaken the leaves from the' forests ; 
three beauteous springs have turned to yellow autumn in 

^ The Quarto reads, " When first your eye I eyed." 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare loi 

the process of the seasons ; and I have seen the perfume 
of three Aprils burned away by three hot Junes since 
first I saw thee fresh who art still the same. No doubt 
that what you said is true ; beauty, like the hand on a 
dial, may steal unperceived from figure to figure, and 
your sweet form, which methinks unchanged, may have 
motion in it, and my eyes be deceived ; in fear of which, 
hear this : Though age is rude, was the summer of love 
dead ere you were born ? 

The poet then averred that he himself would 
share in this happy exemption of love. 

So7i. 22. Nor shall my own glass ever persuade me 
that I am old, so long as youth and thou, as we have just 
seen, are of one date. But when I shall behold the fur- 
rows of time in thy face, I shall hope that death may put 
an end to my days, because the beauty with which thou 
art endowed is but the seemly raiment of my own heart, 
which lives in thy breast, as thy heart lives in mine. 
How can I ever be older than thou art ? And, therefore, 
love, be wary for thyself as I will be, not for myself, but 
for thee, bearing thy heart as tenderly as a nurse does 
her baby ; nor presume upon thy affections, when mine 
are gone, as thou gavest me thyself never to give back 
again. 

Of course, when that was read the osculatory 
processes were resumed, but the time for such 
dalliances was soon to end. Shakespeare was 
living with his father, a yeoman and a mer- 
chant as well, in whose business he assisted, 



I02 A New Study of 

giving an hour also, as he could, to the study 
of law/ But that business, it is generally ad- 
mitted by the commentators, had fallen off of 
late, and was no longer adequate to the needs 
of a double family. Accordingly, he deter- 
mined to go away to try his fortunes in the 
great world. A tradition, heard of a hundred 
years later, gives out that he was driven away 
by threats of prosecution for deer-stealing, to 
which the more sportive youths even of the 
colleges and law schools were addicted. One 
wishes the story were true, if for no other rea- 
son than to justify Landor's fine bit of writing 
in the " Citation and Examination of William 
Shakespeare."^ It was, however, more likely, 
if Shakespeare was driven from home by ex- 
ternal conditions, and not by his own nascent 
desire to mingle in the crowds of the metropo- 
lis, that he was influenced by the growing re- 
ligious troubles of the time. His father, a 
staunch Puritan,^ had passed into non-confor- 
mity, which, under the severe laws of the 
Church, exposed him to danger. This was 
not wholly approved of by his son, who, as a 

^ A mere conjecture, however. 
^Landor's Works, vol. ii., pp. 455-557. 

^ See Shakespeare, Puritan and Recusant, by Rev. T. Carter, 
London, 1897. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 103 

child of the Renaissance, cared for none of the 
creeds.^ 

How could he help turning his face toward 
the great city, which was the seat of govern- 
ment and the centre of literature and the arts ? 
Most of the aspiring young men of the time 
went thither for employment or a career, but it 
was only natural that he should be very much 
depressed by the necessity of leaving his dear 
ones, amid the doubts that hung over his future 
in a new untried sphere. He even seems to 
have feared whether he should ever return, 
and in this dark mood he wrote a sort of fare- 
well to his wife, apparently more solicitous 
about the life of his poetry than his own life. 

Son. J2. If thou survive the day, with which I am 
still contented, when cruel Death shall cover my bones 
with dust and, by some good hap, read again the poor 
rude lines of thy lover who is gone, compare them 
with the better efforts of the time, and, finding that they 
are surpassed by every pen, cherish them for my love's 
sake, and not for their rhymes, which fail to attain the 
heights of more felicitous writers, — oh, then be kind 
enough to add this loving thought, " If my friend's muse 
had grown with the advancing age, he would have given 
me a finer tribute, one capable of taking its place among 
the foremost productions, — but since he has died, and 

' I am quite convinced that Shakespeare was neither Catholic 
nor Protestant, but Humanist, though the question cannot be dis- 
cussed here. 



I04 A New Study of 

superior poets have arisen, I will read their lays for their 
style, but his for their sweet affection." 

(2 J — The Departure from the Beloved. 

In the state of travel, as it existed at that 
time, the young adventurer had to set off on 
horseback. Macaulay, writing of the roads as 
they were a hundred years afterwards, 1668 
instead of 1568, describes them as almost im- 
passable by any vehicle. It took six horses to 
drag a cart or a carriage through the mud, and 
a journey from Oxford to London was a mat- 
ter of three or four days.^ From Stratford to 
London it was still longer, and that it was 
wearisome and slow the poet has told us in a 
sonnet which he no doubt sent from his first 
stopping-place, either by post, or by some re- 
turning merchant. He writes : 

Son. 50. How heavily I get on, when the very repose 
I seek as a rest from toilsome travel reminds me that I 
am measuring the miles away from thee ! Even the 
dull beast that I bestride plods slowly along, as if he 
discerned by some instinct that his rider, carrying a bur- 
den of woe, did not care for speed ; the bloody spur 
impatiently thrust into his side provokes only a heavy 
groan which is the more sharp as it is so responsive to my 
own mood, — recalling that grief lies before me and my 
joy behind. 

' History of England, vol. i., chap. 13. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 105 

The poet continues : 

Son. J I. Yes, ray love excuses this offence of slowness, 
because I am hasting away from its object. Why should I 
hurry, when it puts more distance between us ? What 
need of posting until my return, but in that case, what ex- 
cuse could my poor drudge find, as the extremest swift- 
ness would then be slow ! Ah, if I were then mounted on 
the wind, I should ply the spur, and find no motion in 
the speed of wings. Then no horse could keep pace with 
my desire, — for, being composed entirely of love, it would 
require the assistance of no dull flesh in its fiery race. 
As the beast in going from thee went slow, according to 
my will, in going towards thee I '11 run, and he may walk' 
if he likes. 

At length the traveller, arriving at his desti- 
nation, and having wandered about to find 
a lodging, is exceedingly tired, and goes to bed 
in search of rest. But that, as he informs his 
distant lady, is not to be found. 

Son. 2y. Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed to 
find the rest that is due to my limbs, tired with travel, 
but I have no sooner laid my head upon my pillow than a 
journey begins which works my mind as the travel had 
worked my limbs. My thoughts from this far place un- 
dertake a pilgrimage back to thee, and keep my droop- 
ing eyes open though the darkness is like the darkness of 
the blind. None the less, the imaginary flight of my 
soul presents thine image to my sightless orbs, like a 
jewel set in the ghastliness of night, making her black- 
ness beautiful and her old, worn-out face as new. Thus 

'The Quarto reads " Go," which meant "walk." 



io6 A New Study of 

my body finds no quiet by day and my mind none by 
night, intensely absorbed as I am in what concerns us both. 
Son. 28. Alas ! if this goes on, how shall I ever be 
able to return ? Debarred the benefit of any real rest by 
the double oppression of night and day, when, though 
each is the enemy of the other, they willingly combine to 
torment me, the one by the toil it demands and the 
other by its complaints that I am ever toiling farther off 
from thee. In vain I tell the day, to please him, that 
thou art a grace to him by thy brightness even when 
clouds blot the sky, and in vain I flatter the swarthy- 
hued night by telling him that when the sparkling stars 
do not twinkle thou dost still gild the heavens, for the 
days only lengthen my grief and the night makes its 
strength the stronger. 

The poet comforts himself by recurring to a 
not unusual fancy. He says : 

Son. 44. If the solid substance of my flesh were 
thought, no insolent distance should stop my way; for 
then, in spite of space, I could be brought in a wink 
from the remotest limits to where thou dost dwell. Even 
if my foot should stand upon the utmost verge of the 
earth, my nimble thought would jump both sea and land 
to be with thee. Alas ! the thought kills me that I am 
not thought and able to leap huge lengths of miles to be 
where thou art ; but so much of earth and water mingle 
with the air and fire of my human constitution that I 
must await the leisure of time with my moans, receiving 
naught from elements so slow but tears, which are the 
signs of our mutual woe. 

Son. 45 . Two of these elements, light air and purify- 
ing fire, are always with thee, wherever I may be ; the 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 107 

first representing my thought and the other my desire ; 
they glide about with such swiftness of motion that they 
may be said to be always both present and absent. But 
when the quicker elements are gone on a tender embas- 
sage to thee, my life under the pressure of the other two 
sinks down to death or the oppression of melancholy, — 
as our natures cannot be remade. Yet when these swift 
messengers come back to me, assuring me of thy fair 
health, I joy in the recital, only to be made sad again by 
their departure.* 

It was some solace to the exile that he pos- 
sessed a picture of the absent one, for which 
his eyes and his head were both so eager that 
each one set up an exclusive claim. 

Son. 46. Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war as to 
which I owe that great conquest — the sight of thee! Mine 
eye would bar the heart a look at that picture, and the 
heart deny the eye any freedom of right thereto. My 
heart pleads that thou dost lie in him as in a chest never 
pierced by human eye; but the defendant denies that 
plea and asserts that thou owest him thy fair appearance. 
To decide the case a jury of thoughts, which are also 
tenants of the head, is summoned, and it was determined 
by their verdict that the eye's share should be the out- 
ward part, and the heart's the inward affection.* 

By the possession of this picture the poet 
goes on to say : 

' The notion of the Four Elements Is referred to in so many 
of the plays that it is unnecessary to cite them. 

^ This contest between the heart and the eyes is an old one, and, 



io8 A New Study of 

Son. ^2. I am like a rich man, who holds the key to 
a sweet locked-up treasure. But he does not use it every- 
day, lest the frequency of the enjoyment should blunt its 
edge. Feasts are so exceptional in the pleasure they 
give, so deeply interesting, because they come so sel- 
dom in the course of the year, or, like precious stones, 
or the chief jewels in a coronet, are thinly placed. So 
Time keeps you in my chest, as the wardrobe in which 
my robe is hidden, in order to render some special 
moment especially blest by unfolding the imprisoned 
treasure.' Thus blessed are you whose excellence gives 
scope ; being had, to triumph, being lacked, to hope. 

Our young poet, — he was at most but 
twenty-two years of age, — on his arrival in 
London, though playful at first, soon found 
himself lonely and desolate. Anyone who has 
had the experience of such a transfer from the 
country to a great city, in which he is friendless 
and without means, may judge of the depth of 
that desolation. It is like being set down in a 
wilderness, with no help at hand, and no way 
of exit from its terrors. In his loneliness and 

long before Shakespeare, Mapes had written a poem called Dispu- 
tatio inter Cor et Ocuhim, which was said to be very humorous 
(Warton, vol. i., p. 162). These sonnets have the tone of youthful- 
ness about them which must strike every reader. It is perhaps 
worthy of note, too, that one of them is almost wholly expressed in 
the terms of a trial at law, 

' An illustration, which is repeated by Bolingbroke (7. Henry IV., 
iii., 2, 56) : when boasting how he keeps his person fresh and new, he 
says : " My presence like a robe pontifical, ne'er seen but wondered 
at : and so my state. Seldom but sumptuous, showed like a feast, 
And wan by rareness such solemnity." 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 109 

anxiety our poet yearned for his old home, he 
thinks of old friends, and he laments the time 
he has wasted with a sort of despair. 

Son. JO. When to the sessions of sweet silent thought 
I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh over 
the want of many a thing I once sought, and wailing for 
the waste of opportunities, mine eye, unused to flow, is 
drenched in tears by the memory of precious friends 
now hidden in death's dateless night ; I weep afresh the 
sorrows long since cancelled, and the loss of many a 
vanished sight, — and recall painful grievances foregone. 
As I heavily tell over the sad account of former trials, I 
repeat the old moans, and yet when I think of thee, dear 
love, all losses seem to be compensated, and my sorrows 
come to an end.^ 

In this intense devotion to a single love, 
the poet arrives at an exquisite expression of 
its fulness and concentration. He says : 

Son. 31. Thy bosom becomes the more dear to me as 
it seems to contain all the hearts that, by wanting, I have 
supposed dead. Love reigns there, and all love's tender 
affinities, together with all the friends I may have thought 
buried. How many a holy and funeral tear has been 
stolen from my eyes, as the due of the dead, who were 
only removed for a space and now lie in thee as in a 
sepulchre hung with their trophies. They live again, 

' Main refers, in connection with this tender sonnet, to Ten- 
nyson's 

" Oh for the touch of a vanished hand, 
And the sound of a voice that is still." 



I lo A New Study of 

and whatever interest they once excited in me is trans- 
ferred to thee ; the due of many now is thine alone ; all 
those I loved I behold once more in thee ; and thou, 
including all of them, art my all in all. 

It was in a brighter mood, — perhaps the 
clouds had broken away a little, — that he rai- 
led his beloved on the fact, that while he had 
been so careful, on leaving home, to secure his 
smaller treasure, the greatest treasure of all 
had been overlooked. 

Son. 48. How careful was I, ere I left home, to bar 
up my merest trifles, that they might remain mine, and 
safe from all false hands. But thou, to whom the finest 
jewels are as nothing, my dearest comfort and yet ray 
most anxious care, the best of all dear things, I left an 
open prey for the vulgarest thief to snatch. I had not 
locked thee up in a chest, save the gentle closure of my 
heart,' where thou art not, though I know thou art, 
and mayst depart at any time or even be stolen ; for, in 
the presence of such a tempter, even Truth itself might 
prove a thief. 

Bethinking himself of what he had said, the 
poet subjoins that the fears he had intimated 
were rather unworthy of him. 

Son. 116. Do not let me suggest any obstacles to the 
marriage of true minds." That is not true love which 

' Venus and Adonis, 782, has "the quiet closure of my breast,'' 
also in line 724, we have " Rich preys make true men thieves." 

' " The marriage of true minds" is peculiarly felicitous if, as we 
suppose, the sonnet v^as addressed to the poet's M^ife. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 1 1 1 

alters when it finds alteration in the object of it, or tends 
to fade away with the decline of it in others. No, it 
is an ever-fixed beacon, which looks on tempests and 
cannot be shaken ' ; or, rather, it is like that star which 
serves as a guide to every wandering bark, and whose 
deeper influences, although its altitude may have been 
measured, are unknown. Love is not a mere sport of 
Time ; and noses, lips, and cheeks may fall within the 
reach of his bending scythe ; but love is not a subject of 
brief hours and weeks : it goes forward even to the edge 
of doom. 

Then a new thought comes to the poet and 
he writes : 

Son. iij. The lines I have written to you before, 
even those which said I could not love you more dearly, 
because love is unchangeable, are, in one respect, false, 
for love does change, — it grows. When they were writ- 
ten, my judgment could see no reason why my flame, 
which seemed already at the full, should afterwards burn 
clearer. But, taking into consideration the influence of 
Time, which, in a million ways, creeps in between our 
vows and their fulfilment, which alters the decrees of 
kings, which dims the sacredest beauty, which arrests 
the most fixed resolves and subjects the strongest minds 
to the changing currents of events, — alas, though fearing 
these tyrannies of time, why might I not say, " Now I love 
you best," when I was certain, beyond all uncertainty 
the present was assured and all the rest in doubt ? Love 
is an infant, to whom we may at any time say, " Now 

' Coriolanus (v., 3, 74) says, "Like a great sea-mark, standing 
every flaw." 



112 A New Study of 

you are at the best," and yet give full growth to that 
which never ceases to grow/ 

(jj Hard Struggles and Despondencies. 

Shakespeare, on his arrival in London, had 
his attention drawn to the stage ; his dramatic 
instincts had been awakened, no doubt, by the 
visits of stroUing players to his native village, 
to say nothing of the taste for theatrical enter- 
tainments which had arisen within a few years, 
in spite of the opposition of the Puritans. It 
had particularly affected the Court, which lent 
its favors to the new companies of child-play- 
ers lately set up, and the universities, where 
many of the ancient classic dramas had been 
revived in modern form ; but that a large num- 
ber of the middle classes were also ready for 
them we may infer from the fact that within 
the decade preceding Shakespeare's advent, 
six or seven new theatres had been constructed 

' This sonnet is, in some way slightly defective in expression ; 
and yet the version of it I present seems to convey, without any con- 
siderable change of the words, the meaning of the poet. Professor 
Henry Reed (Lectures, ii., 253) says that it w^ould be difficult to cite 
a finer passage of moral poetry than these descriptions of the master 
passion. " How true and how ennobling to our nature ! We at 
once recognize in the abstract the conceptions which have found a 
dwelling-place and a name in the familiar forms of Desdemona, 
Juliet, Imogen, and Cordelia, those inimitable creations of female 
character, that have been loved as if they \?ere living beings by 
thousands." 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 113 

in the suburbs of the city, thirty or forty writ- 
ers of plays had taken the field, hundreds of 
new plays, such as they were, had supplant- 
ed the former "mysteries" "moralities" and 
" interludes." Much of the best literary tal- 
ent of the day aspired to success in the new 
line. Shakespeare's necessities, if not his 
tastes, would have led him to the boards. It 
was, however, difficult to achieve an entrance 
there. One had to show some real aptitude 
for the calling, and then serve through a pro- 
tracted apprenticeship. A tradition reports 
that Shakespeare began by holding the horses 
of the gentry who attended the performances, 
which, though not well supported, is not wholly 
improbable. He was without money or friends, 
and had to do something for a living. Our 
first authentic report of him is, that he was 
employed in an inferior capacity, or as a 
"supe," we now say, — either call-boy or mes- 
senger, or soldier, one of the mob, or, perhaps, 
as prompter to the actors. Sooner or later he 
took to revising old plays, which brought him 
in contact with the regular writers, when, 
evincing no little superiority in the task, they 
got to consulting him as to their own efforts. 
He even went so far once as to try his hand 
on an old play, which he made his own, or 



114 A New Study of 

largely his own, named Titus Andronicus. It 
was conceived in the worst manner of the 
times, and like the life of Aaron, a principal 
character, was full of 

"... murders, rapes, and massacres, 
Acts of black night, abominable deeds, 
Complots of mischief, treason, villanies, 
Ruthful to hear, yet piteously perform'd." ' 

Strange to say, the play was popular, and en- 
couraged the lad to go on in a bad style. 
How long he continued to write, or to help 
others to write, in this false vein we do not 
know. The successes he had achieved in it 
doubtless gave him a transient predilection 
for it, but his good sense and real dramatic 
instinct sooner or later broke the trammels, 
and he ventured forth in a better line. 

I find some evidence of his struggle to 
release himself in Sonnet No. 137, in which he 
writes : 

Son. 1J7. Thou blindfold love (liking or predilec- 
tion), what dost thou to mine eyes that they should look, 
yet see not what they see ? They know what beauty is, 

* That this play was mainly Shakespeare's we have the positive at- 
testation, first, of Meres, who mentions it by name, and, second, of 
Heminge and Condell, fellow-actors of his for many years, who in- 
cluded it in the first Folio ; and yet many critics express strong 
doubts as to its authorship, on no other grounds than its general in- 
feriority to his other works. But Verplanck and White have, in my 
opinion, left no room for any further disputation on the subject. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 115 

and where it is to be found, and none the less take the 
worst to be the best. If corrupted by their own partial- 
ities for the mere superficial aspect of things, they are 
attracted to that which pleases everybody (" anchored in 
the bay where all men ride "). How is it that their 
falsehood forges hooks for the captivation of the better 
judgment (that of the heart) ? Why should I regard that 
as a peculiar or exclusive possession of my own which 
I know is a common property of the whole world ? Or 
why do mine eyes, seeing what beauty is, affirm that to be 
true which is not so, in order to put a fair semblance on 
an ugly face ? The fact is, that both mine eyes and my 
heart have wandered and are now transferred to this 
mischievous error.' 

Son. 34. Oh, how much more beautiful does beauty 
seem when it is supported and justified by truth ! The 
rose looks fair, but we deem it the fairer because of other 
qualities which it contains. The canker-blooms of the 
hedges have just as deep a color as the fragrant cincture 
of real roses ' ; they hang on the same thorns, and play 
as wantonly with the summer breezes which unmask their 
pretty buds; but inasmuch as their appearance is their 
only attraction, — they live and die without admirers. 
They die even to themselves, which real roses do not, 

• This sonnet I was disposed at first to put in the Dark Lady 
series, where it seems on the surface to belong, but as there is one 
sonnet there already, (No. 148), which is very like in sentiment and 
expression, I doubted whether the poet would so repeat himself in 
the same connection. Besides, as No. 148 imputes to the lady in 
question a far greater latitude of behavior than was the ground of 
his complaint in this sonnet, it occurred to me that the blind fool- 
love he rebukes was not a sexual but an aesthetic fondness. 

' " The perfumed tincture of the roses," may perhaps be a mis- 
print for " cincture." 



ii6 A New Study of 

because their death becomes a source of sweet odors. 
And so, when your fair and lovely youth departs, let it 
live in the truth of your verse. 

Mr. Hallam has inferred from the tone of 
certain of Shakespeare's plays that there was a 
time in his Hfe of extreme depression, '* when 
his heart was ill at ease, or ill content with the 
world or his own consciousness, the memory of 
hours misspent, the pang of affection misplaced 
or unrequited, — the experience of man's worser 
nature, which intercourse with ill-chosen asso- 
ciates particularly teaches, — as they sank down 
into the depths of his great mind, seem not 
only to have inspired into it the conception of 
law and honor, but that of one primary char- 
acter — the censor of mankind." ^ He cites in 
justification of this opinion such plays as Meas- 
ure for Measure and Timon of Athens, which 
look upon the darker side of life alone. But 
as these plays are only partly Shakespeare's 
they can hardly be taken as evidence, even if 
we admit that the real convictions or feelings 
of an author may be derived from his ideal 
creations. 

I have doubted this, in referring to the 
question of his marriage, and I further doubt 
whether his intense depression came upon him 

^ History of the Literature of Europe, vol. ii., pp. 293-299. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 1 1 7 

at any time after his early struggles at the out- 
set of his career. Certainly four of the sonnets 
(Nos. 71-74) express a deep dissatisfaction 
with himself, — but in my view they bear upon 
his literary rather than his moral experiences. 
The latter, of which we shall give an account 
in the next section,-^ may have deepened this 
shadow, but not have been its source. They 
read as follows : 

Son. 73. In my condition, thou mayst discover a 
likeness to that season of the year when yellow leaves, 
or few or none, do hang upon boughs that shiver in the 
cold, — mere ruined choirs now where lately the sweet 
birds sang ; in it thou mayst see the twilight of a day, 
fast fading in the west, when black night, death's second 
self, which shuts up all in rest, will soon swallow it ; 
thou mayst see in it the afterglow of a fire, which lies 
upon its ashes as on a bed of death, where it will soon 
go out, consumed by that which should have been its 
nourishment ; but, perceiving this, thy love is all the 
more precious because it clings to that which must soon 
be lost. 

Son. yi. Yet mourn for me no longer than you shall 
hear the surly sullen bell give warning that I am gone 
from this vain world to dwell among the worms. Then, 
if you should happen to read this line, do not remember 
the hand that wrote it, because I love you so that I 
desire to be forgotten, if thinking of me could cause you 
any sorrow. Yes, I repeat it, if you should look upon 
this verse, when I am mingled with the dust, do not so 

' See Episode of the Dark Lady, post. 



ii8 A New Study of 

much as recall my poor name, but let your love cease 
with my life, — lest the worldly wise should inquire into 
the cause of your grief and hold it in mockery. 

Son. 72. For if the world should ask you to tell 
what merit there was in me, worthy of such love after 
my decease, you could offer nothing in justification, 
except by some well-intended falsehood, attaching to 
my name a higher praise than it deserves, or more than 
strict truth could approve. It would be better for my 
name to be buried with my body, than for you to be 
betrayed by your love into speaking well of that which 
is surely a shame, and I am ashamed of that which 
I produce, as you should be, in loving what is worth 
nothing. 

None the less, be contented : 

Son. 7^. For when that fell seizure, which is without 
bail, shall carry me away, this shall remain with thee as 
a memorial of me. In re-reading it, remember that 
thou dost renew the part of me that was entirely conse- 
crated to thee. The earth may take the body, which 
is its due, but the spirit, the highest quality of our 
nature, is thine. Thou losest but the dregs of life, when 
the body dies, — to become the prey of worms, — the 
conquest of a wretched strife too base to be recalled 
[of that struggle between his higher and lower nature of 
which we may read something in Sonnet 146].* 

' Dowden asks, " Does Shakespeare merely speak of the liability of 
the body to untimely or violent mischance ? Or does he meditate sui- 
cide ? or think of Marlowe's death and anticipate such a fate as possibly 
his own ? Or has he, like Marlowe been wounded ? Or does he re- 
fer to the dissection of dead bodies? Or is it 'confounding age's 
cruel knife' of Son. 63:14? " Rolf e adds: "If not a merely figurative 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 119 

The young poet, however, was not wholly 
discouraged, and under some better inspiration 
tried his hand again, and as I conjecture, on 
" a pleasant conceited comedy " called Loves 
Labor V Lost. It was published in Quarto 
as early as 1598, and then as newly corrected 
and augmented. It was mentioned the same 
year not only by Meres, as we have seen, but 
in a poem entitled Alba, by " R. T., Gentle- 
man," so that it must have been written some 
time before. Several critics date it as early as 
1 59 1, and White in 1588-89. 

Mr. Irving's editor pronounces this the 
worst of all Shakespeare's plays, which it can 
hardly be if he wrote Tihis Andronicus ; 
nor is it by any means, as he avers, " tedious 
and uninteresting." Both as a psychological 
and a historical study, it is full of interest and 
significance, despite its faults, — its occasional 
doggerel, — its puns, its conceits, and its com- 
monplace allusions. It is largely original in 
plot and character, overflows with real wit, — 
" Snip, snap, quick and home, " as Armado 

expression, like this last, the key to it is probably in the first question 
above ; this life which is at the mercy of any base assassin's knife. 
The latter seems to be the preferable explanation. Palgrave says 
the expression must allude to anatomical dissection then recently 
revived in Europe by Vesalius, Fallopius, Pare, and others." " O 
Lord, sir ! " as the clown says, in All V Well that Ends Well. 



I20 A New Study of 

says, — and the blank verse here and there is 
the best that had been written up to its time. 
It excited more than usual attention, on the 
part of Shakespeare's fellow-playwrights, and 
we can easily imagine one of them, say Peele, 
straying into a taphouse, for a morning dram, 
and encountering Mr. Greene, who had been 
there all night, with the salutation, " Well 
Bob, were you at the theatre yesterday ? " 
" No, but what 's up ? " ** A new piece written 
by that stripling busybody from Stratford." 
"Well, how did it go?" "Bad enough; it 
abounds in sonnets, or new rhymes of some 
sort ; and yet the people laughed, and now and 
then there was a burst of this new-fangled 
blank verse, which is likely to make Marlowe 
tremble for his laurels." " That lad," muttered 
Greene, " must be looked to," and he was 
looked to, with a vengeance. 

The playwrights of the time were a far more 
dissolute set than the actors, — given to full 
and riotous living ; good scholars, most of them, 
college bred ; " university wits," as they were 
called, but thorough-going roysterers. They 
rather looked down upon our poor lad without 
academic education, and with, perhaps, rustic 
manners, and those gentle and genial ways, 
on which all reports agree. On the other 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 121 

hand, he rather despised them in his country- 
bred innocence, for their reckless dissipations. 
The two were not of a kind, and kept more or 
less aloof, one from the other. In the end 
Greene, on his death-bed, abused Shakespeare 
roundly as a Johannes Factotum, or Jack of all 
work, and an upstart who strutted about in 
borrowed feathers^ ; Nash ridiculed him more 
than once as a Noverint or lawyer's clerk, who 
made pretensions to literature, though if he 
were going to be hanged he could not muster 
Latin enough to form a necktie. Shakespeare 
felt the disdain and detraction as a sensitive 
youth should do, and recorded his feelings in 
several of his tablets. He was unwilling to 
ascribe their abuse to his own want of merit 
and thought it their envy. He said to him- 
self: 

Son. 70. That thou art blamed, is not on account of 
thy defects, but because of the readiness with which 
slander hits at merit. It has come to be so now 
that suspicion,* like a crow that flies in heaven's purest 
air, is rather an ornament than a detraction. If thou art 
really meritorious such slander proves thy worth the 

' See Greene's Groatsworth of Wit, Bought with a Million of 
Repentance. 

^ The word used is " suspect," meaning suspicion. It is so used by 
Shakespeare no less than ten times, but eight of them in his very 
earliest works, like Henry VI. and the Comedy of Errors. 



122 A New Study of 

greater, and particularly when it is invited by or insti- 
gated by thy youth.* The canker vice selects the earliest 
buds and thou presentest a pure unsullied prime. Thou 
hast passed through the snares that are set for the inex- 
perienced, either not assailed, or if assailed victorious 
over them ; and yet this is not a merit that exempts thee 
from all malice, which seems to be ever more and more 
active. If some calumny were not attached to thy 
efforts, thou wouldst be an exception among writers, and 
reign alone over the world of human admiration. 

Son. 6g. Those qualities of thine, which everybody 
appreciates, need nothing, which a more earnest or heart- 
felt study might impart. All tongues when they speak 
their better sentiments give thee that due, but they utter 
the sheer truth in the tone of an enemy when he is 
obliged to commend. They praise thy external ac- 
complishments in a sort of external way, but when 
they come to speak of thy higher qualities they annul 
what they have conceded, by the use of other ac- 
cents. They try to look into thy inner capacities, which 
they do by guess or inference from thy performances, 
and then the churls lend to thy fair flowers the rank 
smell of weeds ; yet it is not strange that thy fragrance 
does not equal thy show because thou hast allowed thy- 
self to fall into the commonplaces of the day. 

The poet then asks himself : But why should 
I care for these misrepresentations, or why 
allow myself to be influenced by them for the 
worse ? 

* " Being wooed by time," is the phrase here, which may mean 
" solicited by the influence of the times," but the lines that follow 
immediately induce me to adopt the sense given above. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 123 

Son. 121. It is better to be vile in your own way (that 
is, by following out your own impulses honestly, though 
that way may be wrong) — than to accept the reproaches of 
others as true, when they are not, and thereby lose the 
just pleasure of doing what is not deemed a reproach, by 
your own feelings, but by those of others/ Why should the 
false and sophisticated opinions of others be permitted to 
arouse or encourage your wilder propensities or to stimu- 
late passions already sufficiently quickened ? They who 
spy out my frailties are more frail than I am, and they wil- 
fully count that as bad which I think is good. No! I am 
just what I am, neither more nor less; and they who level 
their shots at my supposed abuses only reckon up their 
own. I may be straight while they themselves are 
crooked, and my conduct shall not be estimated by their 
corrupt standards, unless, indeed, we are prepared to 
maintain the generality of evil and to hold all men 
equally bad, and thriving only by means of their 
badness. 

This self-restraint and self-poise he insists 
is the best, even though it may not be free 
from failure. 

Son. g4 They that have the power to do harm and yet 
do no harm, who do not do what they are most capable of 
doing, who, moving others, are themselves unmoved, and 
are cold and slow to temptation, inherit one of the best 
graces of heaven and save nature's endowments from a 
wasteful expenditure. They are the lords and owners 
of their self-expression, while others are but the stewards 

' The poet is here so concise that he becomes not a little obscure, 
and the reader must get the meaning as he best can. 



124 A New Study of 

of the powers they possess. The summer's flower is to 
the summer sweet, although it only lives and dies to 
itself ; yet if that flower meets with infection, the bas- 
est weed may outshine it in dignity. Thus, the sweetest 
things turn the sourest in their perversion, as " lilies that 
fester smell far worse than weeds." " 

Take care, then, O poet, — is the inference, 
— lest the churls entice thee out of the right 
path. 

(4) An Outlook ttpon the Great World. 

While the poet was thus brooding over his 
own disappointments and wrongs, his lustrous 
eyes were looking out also upon the busy 
world, not only of London, but of all Christen- 
dom. Tired of all of it, he exclaims ** I could 
cry for restful death." 

Son. 66. When I behold the highest desert born a 
beggar ; when I behold a crafty nobody trimmed in all 
the trappings of jollity ; when I see the purest faith most 
wickedly betrayed ; the gilded ornaments of honor most 
shamefully misplaced ; maiden virtue brutally strum- 
peted; the perfection of right disgracefully prostituted to 
the basest wrong ; real strength of character disabled by 
limping sway ; art (his own art especially) silenced by 
the interposition of incompetent authority; folly, with 
the air of a learned doctor, controlling skill ; the simple, 

' This line is to be found in the play of Edward III. (ii., i), and 
in a part which has by some critics been attributed to the pen of 
Shakespeare, 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 125 

obvious truth denounced as foolishness ; and good every- 
where subjected to presumptuous ill, — most willingly 
would I take myself out of this hideous coil, save 
that by dying I should abandon my darling to its 
wickedness.* 

One cannot read this summary of social and 
political life without being reminded of the 
famous soliloquy of Hamlet, "To be or not to 
be." Indeed, the whole play of Hamlet turns 
upon these discords in the order of the world, — 
that heavy burden of wrong which society im- 
poses, that terrible injustice which grows out 
of crime, and the self-destruction which the 
sonnet hints at. 

I cannot but think that while the young poet 
was meditating upon these distractions and 
diseases of society, it came to him to ask of 
what service a true poet could be in such a 
medium. 

Son. 67. Oh, wherefore should he live in the midst of 
infection, and by his presence lend a grace to its im- 
pieties, thereby enabling sin to achieve its triumph and 
even embellish itself by the association ? Why should 
false painting, or meretricious methods of representation 
imitate his style, and steal a dead semblance of life from 
his living form ? Why should poor beauty herself ignor- 
antly seek for roses, which are but shadows of roses, 

' This would apply more truly to the far-off dependent Anne, 
than to a member of a wealthy family, surrounded by powerful 
friends. 



126 A New Study of 

when his rose is true ? Why should he live at all, now 
that nature is exhausted by these pretenders who lay 
their hands upon her every aspect and relation, until she 
has no longer blood enough left to blush for shame at the 
outrages they commit ! She has no resources to draw 
upon now but those of the true poet, in whose advances, 
though proud of many excellences, she really lives. Oh, 
him, oh, him, she endows to show what wealth she had 
in former days, before the arrival of these evil times. 

In these last lines, the poet seems to me to 
hint at the relations of Nature to Art, which he 
afterwards dwells upon more fully in a fine 
passage of The Winter s Tale, where Perdita, 
having refused to have anything to do with 
artificial flowers, because they were a sort of 
bastard production, says : 

" There is an art, which in their piedness shares 
With great creating nature." 

And Polixenes replies : 

" Say there be ; 
Yet nature is made better by no mean, 
But nature makes that mean : so, over that art 
Which you say adds to nature, is an art 
That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry 
A gentler scion to the wildest stock. 
And make conceive a bark of baser kind 
By bud of nobler race : this is an art 
Which does mend nature, change it rather, but 
The art itself is nature." 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 127 

** These,"' says Brandes (vol. ii., p. 354), 
and I agree with him, " these are the most 
profound and subtle words that could well be 
spoken on the subject of the relations between 
Nature and Culture." 

The poet continues in the same vein : 

Son. 68. Thus it is, that what the true poet presents 
us is a map * of those days outworn, when beauty came 
and went, as the flowers do now (/. e., spontaneously, 
or without labor, as we see in early legends and folk- 
songs and ballads). That was before these bastard 
signs of beauty made their appearance, or dared to 
ascribe their paternity to some living brain. That was 
before " the golden tresses of the dead,'^ the right of 
the sepulchre," the (exquisite touches of classic authors), 
were stolen away, and made to flourish for a second time 
on a second head, and the dead fleece of beauty was 
paraded gaily as real beauty. But in him, the true poet, 

'The Quarto says, "His cheek is the map of days outworn," 
meaning by cheek what is exposed to view, as in Richard III. (ill., 
3. 57)1 " The cloudy cheek of heaven," or in The Tempest (i., 2, 4), 
"The welkin's cheek," or in Troilus and Cressida (v., 3, 15), 
" The wide cheek of the air." 

Map is often used for "outline," "picture," "pattern," etc. 
Richard II. (v. i., 12) has "Thou map of honor"; 2 Henry VI. 
(iii., i), "In thy face I see the map of honor, truth, and loyalty" ; 
Titus Andronictis (iii., 2, 12), "Thou map of woe"; Lucrece (i., 
1350). "This pattern of the wornout age." That sapient critic, 
Mr. S. Butler, says this sonnet is addressed to Mr. W. H., who 
has been keeping company of which Shakespeare did not approve. 
Yea, verily. 

* " The golden tresses of the dead." See Love's Labor's Lost (iv., 
3, 254-9) I Merchant of Venice (iii., 2, 92), and Tivion (iv., 3, 144). 



128 A New Study of 

we see those holy antique hours, which affected no 
spurious adornments ; the poet was himself and true to 
himself, not making a summer out of the green growths 
of others, nor robbing the past to dress out his beauty 
as if it were new. No, nature enriches him as a model 
for later times, in order to show false art what beauty 
was of yore. 

It is pleasant to think that during this period 
of desolation and in the midst of his increasing 
activities of business, the absent poet did not 
forget his annual poetic tribute to the mother 
in the country. On one of these occasions he 
wrote : 

So7i. g8. I have been away from you in the spring, 
when richly apparelled April imparts the spirit of youth 
to everything, and even the heavy Saturn laughs and leaps 
with joy, and yet neither the color nor the fragrance 
of its many different flowers could inspire me to any 
jovial effort,' not even to pluck them from their stalks. 
Nor do I praise the white of the lily, or the vermilion of 
the rose, for they were sweet and delightful only as 
drawn after thee, the pattern of all lovely things. It is 
always winter, when you are away, and I could play with 
them only as your shadows. 

On another occasion he continues : 

Son. 99. I could only chide them (the flowers) for 
their thieveries and I said to the violet, sweet thief, 
whence hast thou thy sweetest spells, but from my 

* " A sad tale 's best for winter," says The Winter's Tale. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 1 29 

love's breast/ Their purple complexion was derived 
from thy veins ; the whiteness of the lily I condemned 
when compared to thy hands, and the buds of marjoram 
had been stolen from thy hair. Even the roses stood 
anxiously among their thorns, one blushing for shame, 
another white from fear, — a third not white nor red, 
but both, because they had robbed their colors from 
thee, and annexed thy breath. The last, indeed, was 
eaten up by a canker in the midst of his proud show. 
Many other flowers I noted, but they had all purloined 
their scent or their color from thee. 

Then at another time the poet repeats the 
thought almost in the same words but with in- 
creasing emphasis. 

Son. gy. How like a winter has my absence been ; what 
freezing have I felt, what dark days seen ; the barrenness 
of old December everywhere, and yet the time elapsed has 
been the summer time. Even teeming autumn (bearing 
the rich burdens of the season, like widowed wombs 
after their lord's decease), despite its abundant issue, 
brought but a barren and unfruitful hope.^ Summer and 
the pleasures of summer wait on thee, and when thou 
art away the very birds are mute, or if they sing at all, it 
is in a cheerless strain, while the leaves grow pale in fear 
of the coming gloom. 

I have reserved to the last, as covering the 
whole of this period of struggle, dejection, and 

' The Quarto has ' ' my love's breath, " which is the same thought 
we have in a few lines below and certainly a misprint. 
'^ The words of the Quarto are, " but hope of orphans." 
9 



130 A New Study of 

effort, a sonnet, which is not only remarkable 
for its merit, but which carries with it a singular 
pathos of suggestion. 

Son. 2g. When in disfavor with fortune, and the 
opinions of men, I weep over my condition, in utter 
solitude, and trouble the irresponsive heaven with my 
useless cries, — wishing that I were more rich in hope, 
featured like this one, or befriended like that, — desiring 
this man's art or that man's range, and the least of all 
satisfied with what I most enjoy (his own efforts, doubt- 
less), and yet despising myself for these very thoughts, 
for in the midst of them I haply think of thee, with heart 
elate, like to the lark which at break of day springs 
from the sullen earth and sings its hymns at the very 
gates of heaven, for, thy sweet love remembered brings 
such wealth of happiness, that I would not change my 
state for that of any king. 

What is so pathetic here is, that this youth 
looking about him in this forlorn way, had, in 
less than ten years, placed himself at the head 
of the dramatic art of England, and, in less 
than twenty, at the head of the dramatic art of 
all time. 

V. THE EPISODE OF THE DARK LADY. 

It is not known precisely when a " syren 
wound her coils of grace " about our poet, but 
it must have been, in all likelihood, after he 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 131 

had attained some distinction on the stage. 
Women we know have a soft spot in their 
hearts for handsome young actors, and, in this 
case, to the charms of the actor were, perhaps, 
added those of the budding playwright. Ac- 
cording to the Sonnets themselves this woman 
was already married, young, and accomplished 
as a musician, and though not a famous 
beauty in the popular sense, yet of impressive 
appearance. Her dark complexion and her 
brilliant black eyes attracted attention. She 
was not a simple Anne Page, nor a poetic 
Perdita, but rather a cunning Cressida, who 
knew how to advance or retreat as the exigen- 
cies of her game might require. That she was 
of good social position we gather from the slow 
and respectful manner in which the poet made 
his approaches. Indeed, a traditional report 
says that she was a lady in waiting on Queen 
Elizabeth, who was afterwards dismissed be- 
cause of her indiscretions. One writer, Mr. 
Tyler, has gone so far as to assert positively 
that she was a Mistress Mary Fitton, and he 
builds an elaborate and complex story upon the 
assumption.^ It has, however, since been shown, 
that Mistress Mary Fitton was a blonde, of 
brownish hair, and gray eyes, and not other- 

' Introduction to the fac-siijiile edition of the Sonnets. 



132 A New Study of 

wise answerable to the descriptions of the 
Sonnets.* 

When and where the poet encountered this 
lady does not appear ; but it may have been 
either at some of the performances given by 
his company before the Court at Whitehall or 
Richmond, or at the public theatre, where 
persons of quality often sat upon the stage. 
Be that as it may, a social gulf opened between 
the poor player and the lady of society which 
had to be bridged in some way before they could 
be intimate. It would have been a gross breach 
of etiquette for him to address her directly, and 
she could not have approached him very well, 
except in the way of ** judicious oeillades " 
and occasional half-smothered smiles. They 
began in that spirit of gallantry which, accord- 
ing to Mrs. Jameson, prevailed to such an 
extent in the age of Elizabeth, and was marked 
by expressions of extravagant courtesy and 
devotion, without much real feeling at the 
bottom. " The pretended lover described his 
mistress," as Warton says,^ '* not in terms of 
intelligible yet artful panegyric, nor in the real 
colors and with the genuine accomplishments 

' Gossip from a Muniment Room. By Lady Newdegate, London, 
1897. 

"^History of English Poetry, vol. iv., p. 322. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 133 

of nature, but as an eccentric ideal being of 
another sphere and inspiring sentiments equally- 
unmeaning, hyperbolical, and unnatural." 

( i) The Gradual Approaches of the Poet. 

In this preliminary difhculty the player began 
in the style of his suitors, in Loves Labor 's 
Lost, i.e., by dropping a poem in her path, or ■ 
it may have been into her lap as he passed in 
or out among the audience. Taking his cue 
from his profession, he wrote in this wise : 

. So?i. 2j. Like an imperfect actor on the stage whose 
fears put him out of his part,' or like some wild thing ^ 
in an excess of passion, whose abundant strength is a 
source of his weakness, — I dare not trust myself to 
speak, lest I should forget the phrases which are proper 
in the first rites of love. Overburdened by my feelings, 
their fulness may prove an impediment to their suitable 
expression, and therefore I beg that my book (or the tab- 
let on which he wrote) may be accepted as the dumb but 
eloquent precursor of my speech. It pleads for my 
love and for some return to that love, more ardently than 
any tongue that could say more in more effective words. ^ 

'As Coriolanus says (v. iii., 40-42). 

' ' Like a dull actor now 
I have forgot my part, and I am dumb. " 

'The Quarto has "fierce thing," meaning " wild thing," as in 
Cymbeline (v., 5, 382), or in Hamlet (i., i, 21). Johnson says, it was 
employed as "vehement, rapid," and Schmidt as "irregular," 
"disordered." It refers liere likely to the poet's country training. 

^ How exceedingly ludicrous this hesitation and timidity appear 
on the supposition that the poet is addressing (not a woman still a 
stranger to him) but a young man greatly his inferior in years ! 



134 A New Study of 

As it belongs to the finer cunning of love to hear with 
the eyes, oh, be pleased to read in this what silent love 
hath writ ! 

What seems to have impressed the poet most 
strongly was the lady's dark complexion, which 
(rare in northern climates,) is common enough 
among Orientals and Italians, in this country 
among Creoles. By a singular use of words, 
dark was then called black. Othello, who 
was merely a Moor, speaks of himself as black. 
Cleopatra says that she was blackened by the 
** amorous pinches of the sun," and Rosaline, 
in Loves Labor 's Lost, is compared to ebony.^ 
It was not, however, a complexion that 
had formerly been admired, and it seems an 
adroit move on the part of the poet, to open 
his appeal with an ingenious defence of its 
attractiveness. He wrote : 

Son. 12'/. In the olden time, black was not regarded 
as beautiful, or if it was, it was not so named ; ' but in 
these modern times, when ladies undertake to darken 

•So in the Two Gentletnen of Verona (v. ii., lo) Thurio says, 
" My face is black," and quotes the adage, " Black men are pearls 
in beauteous ladies' eyes." 

■^ Grant White sayc, "that during the chivalric ages, brunettes 
were not acknowledged as beauties anywhere in Christendom. In 
all the old contes, fabliaux, and romances, the heroines are blondes, 
and even the possession of dark eyes and hair, and the complexion 
that accompanies them, is referred to by the troubadours as a mis- 
fortune." — Shakespeare's Works, vol. ii., p. 236. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 135 

their faces artificially, hiding their real beauty under a 
mask, it has become an heir of beauty by right of suc- 
cession. With many who are not born fair, this change 
is a trick, which profanes real beauty, — but my mis- 
tress* eyes are raven black by nature, her brows the same, 
and they are so, that they may mourn over those who 
slander creation by putting upon it a false esteem ^ ; 
they mourn so becomingly that every tongue is begin- 
ning to say now that all beauty should be black. 

The sentiment of this sonnet is expanded 
into nearly a scene in Loves Labor 's Lost 
(iv., 3, 247) where the King ralhes Biron on 
the color of his lady's face. 

King : " By Heaven, thy love is black as ebony." 

Biron : " Is ebony like her ? O wood divine ! 
A wife of such wood were felicity. 
No face is fair that is not full so black." 

King : " O paradox ! Black is the badge of hell. 

The hue of dungeons and the shroud of night." 

Biron : " Oh, if in black my lady's brow be deck'd. 
It mourns that painting and usurping hair 
Should ravish doters with a false aspect, 
And therefore is she born to make black fair. 

' Burckhardt ( TAe Renaissance in Italy, p. 371 ei seq!) treats at 
considerable length of the efforts of Italian women to alter their 
appearance, not only by toilettes, but by cosmetics, — which tended to 
the formation of a conventional type, by the most transparent decep- 
tions. In these new modes of ornamentation the hair was an 
especial favorite. It was not only dyed, but often replaced by wigs 
of silk. The practice was followed to some extent in England, 
where many mixtures for beautifying the face — waters, plasters, and 
paints — were in vogue, and for sale even in the shops. 



13^ A New Study of 

Her favour turns the fashion of the day, 
Her native blood is counted painting now ; 
And therefore red, that would avoid dispraise, 
Paints itself black, to imitate her brow." ' 

Still the lady was seemingly obdurate, and 
the poet, piqued a little by her apparent 
haughtiness, talks out plainly. 

Son. 131. Thou art as tyrannical, black as thou art, 
as those whose pride in their acknowledged beauty 
renders them cruel. Thou knowest that to my doting 
heart thou art fair and precious, although it must in 
good faith be confessed that others do not behold in 
thee qualities which excite the deepest sentiments of 
admiration. Nor am I so bold as to say that they err, 
excepting to myself, when I swear they do, and a 
thousand groans come huddling one upon the other to 
prove their falsehood and my truth. Thou art '' black " 
in nothing save thy deeds, ( /. e., thy modes of treating 
me,) — which have given rise, no doubt, to the depreciat- 
ing speeches that have got abroad. 

These compliments ought to have conciliated 
the dame, but it seems they did not, and she 
continued her ostensible haughtiness ; yet the 
poet was equal to the occasion and he turned 
from her face to her eyes, writing : 

' As the poet is not likely to have taken his private sonnet from 
his public play, we have some evidence here as to the date of these 
Sonnets, vs^hich must have been before 1588-9, when the play was 
published. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 137 

Son. 132. I love thine eyes particularly, because, 
knowing the disdain of thy heart, they mourn in sym- 
pathy with my distress. 

And truly not the morning sun of Heaven 
' Better becomes the gray cheeks of the east, 

Nor that full star that ushers in the even 
Doth half that glory to the sober west 
As those two mourning eyes become thy face. 

Then, since this mourning lends thee so much grace, 
let it beseem thy heart as well, and thy pity show itself 
the same in every part. In which event I shall be pre- 
pared to swear that all true beauty is black and that 
those who lack thy complexion, are really ugly. 

The poet then goes on to another point : 
"Thine eyes do me the favor of pleading 
for me, and so mine reciprocate the service, by 
portraying thee on my heart." 

Son. 24. Mine eye has turned painter and represented 
thy form of beauty on the tablets of my soul. My body 
is the frame wherein the picture is held, in a perspective 
or at a point of view, which shows it at the best. It is 
through the skill of the artist that thou wilt find thy 
real perfections. The picture hangs in my bosom as in 
a showcase, glassed by mine eyes, and so it is that our 
eyes have done a good turn for each other. Thine 
eyes have favored me (Son. 132) and mine have drawn 
thee, in such a way, that the sun delights to peep 
through the windows (my eyes) that he may see thee in 
thy completeness. Yet the eyes depict what they see and 
lack that cunning which is able to show the whole heart. 



138 A New Study of 

Let me, however, be frank, and tell the 
whole truth. 

Son. 141. I do not love thee with mine eyes alone, 
which might, perhaps, by scrutinizing too closely, dis- 
cover a few defects. Mine ears are not enraptured by 
thy tones ; nor do any of my senses, (smell, taste, nor 
a tenderer but baser feeling) care to be invited to 
any mere sensual entertainment. It is my heart that 
dotes in spite of these, and neither my five wits, nor my 
five senses, can dissuade it from its devotion. They 
leave me unswayed — the mere likeness of a man, thy 
wretched vassal and slave, only my trouble is also a 
gain, inasmuch as she who makes me offend awards the 
punishm.ent. 

In the disappointment the poet pretends to 
feel, because of her continued disdain, he ad- 
vises her to be as wise as she is cruel, and not 
push his silent patience to an extreme. He 
says : 

Son. 140. Be wise as thou art cruel and do not drive 
me to despair, lest in that despair I should resort to the 
use of pitiless words. If I might teach thee a bit of 
prudence, it would be to tell thee it were better if thou 
dost not love me to say that thou dost ; for I am like a sick 
man, in the prospect of death, who desires to hear from 
his physician no language but that of encouragement 
— or an assurance that he is doing very well. Ah, if I 
should be pushed to desperation, I should go mad, and, 
in that madness, give utterance to slander, which the 
carping world would be too ready to believe, and 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 139 

therefore, lest I should be so misled, and thou belied in 
consequence, keep thine eyes in the right direction, 
even if thy heart has gone astray. 

But the language of the eyes is not enough, 
and the poet wants, besides, her honest word 
from the tongue. She is unkind, and he 
cannot endure it. He beseeches : 

Son. ijg. Do not ask me to approve the wrong which 
thy unkindness inflicts upon my heart ; do not wound 
me with thine eyes, but with thy tongue ; and tell me 
frankly that thou lovest elsewhere. Use thy power 
directly, and do not kill me by cunning. Do not in my 
presence cast thy glances aside. What need is there of 
resorting to this insidious means, when thy might is 
more than my overpressed defences can endure ? And 
yet there may be an excuse for the deadly use of thine 
eyes ! My love knows that her pretty looks have been 
my enemies, and now turns them upon my rivals, that 
she may injure them as she has injured me ; yet do not 
do it, dear, for as I am nearly slain, kill me at once, 
and end my misery. 

How long the poet was kept dangling in 
this uncertain way we cannot say, but sooner 
or later he was admitted to a closer intimacy, 
which did not turn out precisely as he had 
expected. Instead of that simple, fresh, and 
honest intercourse, to which he had been used 
in his early love at Stratford, he encountered 



I40 A New Study of 

the conventionalities of a highly artificial cir- 
cle, which professed sincerity, but had none. 
He describes it thus : 

Son. 138. When my mistress swears that she is en- 
tirely truthful, I feign to believe her, though I know all 
the while that she is fibbing, and I do so, that she may 
regard me as a raw, unsophisticated youth, wholly un- 
familiar with the subtleties that are the fashion. Thus, 
pretending to think that she thinks me young, although 
she knows that I am past my prime (or that I have 
reached middle age, which then came earlier than it 
does now), I smilingly credit her falsities. Thus, on 
both sides, we suppress the real facts, and I lie to her, 
while she lies to me, and so by reciprocal falsehoods, 
we flatter each other's vanities. 

It was a game of gallantry, not worthy of 
being reproduced here but for the light it 
throws upon the playful nature of an experi- 
ence which in the end became very serious. 

(^) Progress of the Flirtation. 

Aware of the pride that performers upon 
instruments take in their accomplishment, the 
poet complimented the lady upon her skill 
with the virginal, the great, great grand- 
mother of our modern piano forte, and he in- 
fused into his praises a good deal of apparent 
admiration. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 141 

Son. 128. When thou, my music (or, my source of 
delight and harmony), dost touch the blessed wood with 
thy fingers, I envy the nimble jacks (or keys) that leap to 
kiss " the tender inward of thy hand " ' ; and my poor 
lips, which should gather that delicious harvest, blush 
at their boldness. They would, indeed, like to change 
places with the dancing chips ; but, since the little fel- 
lows are so happy in their vocation — why — why — give 
them thy fingers, but me thy lips to kiss. 

That was an audacious suggestion, no doubt, 
for a country fellow, and an actor at that, to 
make, and the lady took it, or pretended to 
take, in dudgeon ; so the poet was compelled 
to apologize, which he did by punning in a 
strange way upon his name. He wrote thus : 

Son. 136. If thy soul chide thee that I come so near, 
(as to invoke a kiss), let thy blind soul remember that I 
am Will (Will — I — am), and that will is admitted to be 
one of the qualities of the soul ! To that extent, then, 
sweet, fulfil my love-suit — /. e.^ allow me to be a part 
of thy soul. Will will complete thy treasure of love, 
by filling it full of affections ; yea, although his affection 
is but one, that is, none in one sense, number, it is 
many in another sense. In things of mere account, it 
is easily proved, that one is reckoned none, and so as a 
mere number let me pass untold.^ And yet I must be 

* " The tender inward of thy hand " is an expression that shows 
that the person addressed was at least not used to work. 

^ See Hero and Leander. Sect, i., 1. 339 : "For one no number 
is " ; also Romeo and yuliet (i., 232-3) : One '* may stand in number, 
though in reckoning none." 



142 A New Study of 

regarded in estimating thy store of afiection. Hold me 
as nothing, even — if it please thee to hold that nothing 
— me, as something sweet to thee. Make but the word 
Will (which means desire affection), an object of thy 
love, and continue to love it — and then, thou lovest me, 
because my name is Will.' 

But why should these be more than one, the 
poet asks, putting his question in the same 
punning guise. Strange and frivolous as the 
practice of punning seems to us now, it was 
in great vogue in the age of Elizabeth, as an 
evidence of the dexterity of the poet and of 
the ingenuity of the reader. Shakespeare, 
himself, in his early plays, resorts to it, in the 
solemnest moments, such as the prospect and 
near advent of death. In this sonnet the 
word will occurs no less than thirteen times, 
and several times with a slightly modified sig- 
nificance, which the reader is left to discover 
if he can ; my own exposition of this son- 
net is this : 

Son. 1^5. Whoever has her wish, thou hast thy 
Will (Shakespeare), and thou hast Will, or his desire, 
besides, which is having Will in superfluity. Am not I 

' This sonnet, owing to the constant play upon words, is not a little 
obscure ; and yet one can get a meaning out of it. The last lines 
amount to this — "In counting the number of those who hold thee 
dear, do not count me as a number, — for as a mere number one is 
none, — but in estimating the worth of what you possess (your 
store), I am to be regarded in the account. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 143 

alone more than enough to vex thy gentle disposition by 
making appeals to it in this wise ? " Wilt thou, whose 
likings are broad and spacious, not vouchsafe to hide 
my desire in thine, or to identify our affections ; shall 
the desire of others for thy regards appear agreeable 
while my liking is met with a scant show of accept- 
ance ? As the ocean, though it is all water, continues 
to receive the raindrops, and so add to its abundance,* 
so mayst thy affection, rich as it is already, receive 
this little contribution of mine, to render it the larger. 

Of this use of Will, in the sense of liking or 
affection, we have an instance in King John 
(ii., I, 510), where Blanch playfully says : 

" Mine uncle's will (choice or desire) in this respect 

is mine : 
If he sees aught in you that makes him like. 
That anything he sees, which moves his liking, 
I can with ease translate it to my will (choice). 
Or, if you will, to speak more properly, 
I will enforce it easily to my love (affection)." ' 

* How exquisitely this image of the sea is used by Juliet when she 
exclaims, 

" My bounty is as boundless as the sea, 
My love as deep ; the more I give to thee, 
The more I have, — for both are infinite." 

— Ro7neo and Juliet. 
" Mr. Sidney Lee's interpretation of this sonnet, giving to the 
word Will, the sense of lust, is so grossly offensive that it is a dis- 
grace to literature. Shakespeare, " the gentle Willy," or " the sweet 
Will," of his contemporaries, was not a blackguard, and could never, 
under any circumstances, have written to or of any woman whose ac- 
quaintance he had sought, that her sensuality was as insatiable as the 
sea. All these sonnets were meant to be complimentary, not vitu- 
perative or insulting, and they can be so construed without doing 
any violence to the text. 



144 A New Study of 

What occasion is there for the attitude you 
assume, in regard to my offence (the wish 
to kiss her.) 

Son. 142. Love in me is a sin, it seems, while thou 
dost hold thy hate of it as a signal virtue ? Compare thine 
own state with mine, and thou wilt see that mine needs no 
especial reproach, — or, if it does, — not from those lips 
of thine which have " profaned their scarlet ornaments," ' 
and sealed false bonds of love, as oft as mine have 
robbed their best revenues (/, <?,, of the lips) of their 
proper rents.* Let it be as lawful for me to kiss thee, as 
it is for thee to love those whom thine eyes woo as 
mine woo thee. Plant compassion in thy heart, that 
when it grows it may deserve to be reciprocated. If 
thou dost seek to have what thou dost chide in others 
thou mayst be denied by thine own example. 

The gibes of the sonnet must have stung 
the lady to a retort, in which she probably 
demanded with some impatience his right to 
question her goings on, or to impute actions 
to her which were none of his business. The 
poet was quick to reply : 

Son. ^8. That god who made me first your slave " 

' The text in line 8, besides being ungrammatical, is so gross that 
it must be corrupt. The lady is told that her lips have played 
false as oft as mine (/.<?., my lips) have " rob'd others' beds, 
revenues of their rents," which has no sense. What the poet meant 
to say, I think, was, that she had no right to reproach him on the sub- 
ject of kissing, because her lips had doubtless offended, as often as 
his lips had robbed the best revenues of the lips of their proper dues. 

^ Which must have been Cupid, as there never was a god of 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 145 

forbid that I should ever attempt to control your times 
of pleasure. Being merely your vassal, I have nothing 
to do but to wait upon your leisure, and suffer during 
the enforced absence your liberty imposes upon me, 
without the least desire to accuse you of any intentional 
injury. Be where you may, your charter of freedom 
is so strong that you are privileged to do as you like, 
and ask pardon of nobody but yourself. My duty is 
simply to wait and, though that waiting be a sort of hell, 
not to question your conduct, whether it be good or ill. 

The poet is particularly adroit in his assault 
when he asks the coy dame whether in her 
various wanderings she purposely haunted him, 
by visiting his slumbers. 

Son. 61. Is it thy wish, that thine image should keep 
my eyes open during the whole of the heavy night ? 
Dost thou really desire to break my slumbers by mock- 
ing shadows of thyself ! Dost thou send thy spirit away 
from home, to pry into my doings, and discover how I 
may happen to be employed in my idle hours ? Is that 
the scope and tenor of thy jealousy? Ah, no, I cannot 
think so ; for, although thou mayst have some regard 
for me, thy love is not capable of that ; it is my own 
earnest love that keeps my eyes on the alert and defeats 
every attempt at repose, causing me to play the watch- 
man for thy sake, and particularly when thou art away, 
— too far from me, and all too near to others. 

" There it goes again," we can almost hear the 
detected coquette exclaim, " always spying into 

friendship. This line alone ought to have instructed the critics that 
these Sonnets concerned a woman and not a man. 



146 A New Study of 

my affairs ! If I choose to be agreeable to 
others, it concerns me alone ; and your insinu- 
ations are impertinent." But, rejoins the poet, 

Son. 57. As I am your admitted slave, what should I 
do but look a little into your ways ? I have no time to 
waste, nor services to render, but such as you require. 
Nor dare I, my sovereign, chide the tedious hours whilst 
I am watching the clock for you. When you have once 
bid your servant adieu, he does not dwell upon the bit- 
terness of the absence ; he has no jealous thought, as to 
where you may be, or conjecture as to how you are 
occupied. I think of nothing save the happiness of those 
fortunate enough to be where you are ! Love is such a 
fool that it thinks no ill of anything that you like to do. 

It was now time for the lady to have her say, 
and, as we may suppose, she tells him that it was 
all very well for him to write in his effusive 
way ; he was a poet, and poets liked to scrib- 
ble, even if it were about their delusions. She 
doubted very much, in spite of his rhapsodies, 
whether he cared a fig for her (which was 
the coquettish way of drawing him further on). 
He rejoins : 

Son. 14Q. O cruel, how canst thou say that I do not 
love thee when I give so many evidences to the con- 
trary ! Do I not take thy part against myself ; do I not 
think of thee, when in my absorption I forget myself ? 
Who dislikes thee that I call friend, or whom do I favor 
that receives thy frown ? Nay, if thou lowerest upon 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 147 

me do I not moan ? Or what merit is there in me that 
I should esteem it — if it were too proud to do thee a ser- 
vice ? All that is best in me worships even thy defects, 
commanded by the glances of thine eyes. But, love, 
now I know thou lovest those that can see, while in my 
passion I am blind. 

It is perhaps worthy of remark that in this 
protestation, the poet uses many of the same 
thoughts that he afterwards put into the mouth 
of Queen Katharine, in her defence against 
Henry VIII. 

At some time or another in the course of 
his gallant attentions, the poet had reason to 
suspect, or he pretended to suspect, that his 
lady was casting her eyes with a little too 
much earnestness in another direction, and he 
began to query with himself whether his lik- 
ings were altogether well founded. Others 
were less favorably impressed by his inamor- 
ata than he was himself ; and he writes : 

Son. 148. Ah, me, what eyes hath love put in my 
head, to regard that as attractive which the world says 
is not so ? But if it be not so, what has become of my 
judgment ? Love's eye (aye) is not so true as all men's 
no ; but how can it be true, when it is perturbed by 
watching and tears ? Even the sun on high cannot see 
clearly until the heavens be free of clouds. No wonder, 
then, if I should be mistaken ! Ah, cunning love, thou 
keepest me blind, lest my eyes, by seeing better, should 
discover some of thy ugly faults. 



148 A New Study of 

This rival, unknown as yet, the poet chose 
to consider a forerunner of Diomed ; ^ who 
could seemingly draw off in order to draw on, 
and he charges the lady with taking the lead 
in the chase. He writes : 

Son. 143. Lo ! like a careful housekeeper, who runs 
to catch one of her feathered pets that has broken away, 
and sets down her baby, to make more haste, and get at 
the thing she would have, shamefully regardless of her 
infant's cries of discontent, thou dost run after that 
which flies from thee, and the poor child is left far be- 
hind ! Well, if thou shouldst succeed in catching thy 
hope, turn back to me, and be a true mother, — kiss and 
be kind once more ; and then I shall pray that thou 
mayst have thy Will, and still my loud sobs. 

It was not long, however, before the poet dis- 
covered that this rival in devotion to the fair 
one was a particular and dear friend, whom 
he seems to have commended to the lady's 
acquaintance and favor. Supposing the love 
of the new admirer to be of the same nature 
with his own, he playfully rallied them both. 
To the lady he said : 

(j) A Remonstrance to the Lady. 

Son. ijj. The mischief take that heart which com- 
pels mine to suffer because of the wound it gives, 
both to my friend and myself. Was it not enough to 

^Troilus and Cressida, (v., 2. 30-60). 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 149 

torture me alone by thy caprices and disdains, but that 
thou must now subject my friend to thy cruel slavery? 
Thine eye has torn me from myself ; it has taken away 
my next self, — and I am bereft of him, of myself, and 
of thee, by which I am thrice crossed and made to en- 
dure a threefold torment.' Emprison my heart in thy 
steel bosom, if thou art inclined, but let it be as a bail 
for my friend's heart ; thou wilt not then use rigor 
against him as I shall be his guard. Yet I fear thou wilt, 
for I being pent in thee, I and all that is in me are thine 
perforce (/. e., to be used at thy pleasure). 

In this same tone of half banter and half 
remonstrance, the poet goes on to say : 

So7t. 132. Now that I have confessed the winning of 
my friend from me, even v/hile I am still mortgaged to 
thy love, let me add, that I will forfeit myself wholly, if 
thou wilt restore him to me, to be my comfort again. 
But that I am persuaded thou wilt not do ; for thou art 
covetous of admiration, and he is amiable : and the re- 
sult will be that as he entered into the affair as a surety 
for my truth and the certainty of my attachment, thou 
wilt have both in thy bonds, — and remorseless usurer as 
thou art, thou wilt exact the full penalty of the double 
obligation thy beauty has imposed. Thou wilt keep the 
friend who came only as a debtor for my sake, and I 
shall lose him because I have been most unkindly de- 
ceived. I have lost him, but thou hast still both him 
and me ; and though he has paid the whole debt, yet I 
am not released. 

^ The line in the Quarto reads : "A torment thrice threefold, 
thus to be crossed," which is bad rhythm, but may be easily cor- 
rected, if we say, "A threefold torment, thus to be thrice crossed." 



I50 A New Study of 

( ^) A Friendly Remonstrance zuith the Friend. 

Towards his young rival the poet was no 
less lenient, and simply rallied him upon his suc- 
cess, not yet knowing how far the liaison had 
advanced. He writes : 

Son. 41. The pretty wrongs ' — pretty, not serious, it 
will be seen — thy liberty commits, are not unsuited to 
thy beauty and youth, which are both a temptation to 
the sex. Since thou art handsome, thou art likely to be 
pursued, and since thou art young, likely to be won. What 
woman's son will leave a woman until she have pre- 
vailed ? Ah, me, and yet thou mightest have forborne to 
invade the place I occupy,'' and even rebuked a seduc- 
tion which is leading thee into a riot in which thou art 
forced to break a double truth ; first, hers, by tempting 
her to thee, and second, thine own, in being false to me. 

Son. 42. It is not the whole of my grief that thou 
hast won her affections, although I loved her very much ; 
my chief complaint is that she has won thine, a loss that 
touches me most nearly ; yet, loving offenders, I see how 
it is ; I will find an excuse for both : thou lovest her be- 
cause thou knowest I love her, and she deceives me and 
suffers my friend to approve her for my sake. If I lose 
thee, my loss is my love's gain, and if I lose her, my 

' Palgrave uses the word "petty," in the sense of small or incon- 
siderable. 

''■ The Quarto here has " my seat," which some critics construe in 
the gross and offensive sense given to the words in Othello (i., 2,. 304) 
but — as the offence in the first line is called "pretty" or "petty," 
that can hardly be vs^hat is intended. Steevens suggests " my sweet," 
but my own opinion is that ' ' seat " here is used simply for the place 
that is already occupied. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 151 

friend profits by my loss. Both of you find each other, 
and I lose both ; and both for my sake lay on me a double 
cross ; and yet the great joy of it all is, that my friend 
and I are one, and so, sweet flattery, she loves but me 
alone.' 

There seems to have been no end to the 
poet's kindUness, and he adds : 

Son. 40. Take all my loves, my dear friend, yes, take 
them all, and thou wouldst have no more love than thou 
hast had before. All my heart was thine without this 
addition. If it be from love to me that thou receivest 
this new love, thou art not to be blamed ; yet thou 
wouldst deserve to be blamed if thou wilfully seek love 
which thou dost not appreciate. I forgive thy robbery, 
gentle thief, although thou stealest from my poverty, and 
thou must know that a wrong done to love is worse than 
an injury. 

( ^) Crossing the Barriers^ or a Change of 
To7ie. 

There is no reason to beheve, from anything 
to be found in the Sonnets themselves, that 
the relations of the parties concerned were, up 
to a certain time, other than those of fashion- 
able gallantry. But to our surprise we come 
upon a sonnet which compels us to the conclu- 

' The play in the couplet upon the reciprocity or single-double 
ownership of love is the same as Portia's when she says to Bassanio : 

' ' One half of me is yours, th' other half yours — 
Mine own, I would say, — but, if mine, then yours. 
And so all yours." — Merchant of Venice (iii., 216). 



152 A New Study of 

sion that a great change has taken place. It 
shows that the poet was far more deeply inter- 
ested than he had supposed, and when con- 
vinced of the insincerity of his mistress, had 
himself thrown off all restraint and pushed his 
suit beyond the bounds. Chided then by the 
lady, after the manner of such, for having vio- 
lated his honor and taken advantage of his 
privileges, he defends his course in this some- 
what equivocal way : 

Son. i^i. Love, or Passion, is too young, impetuous, 
and reckless, to care about conscience, or right and wrong, 
although we know that conscience is born of the love 
of truth and justice. But, gentle gamester, do not push 
thy accusations too far, lest it should turn out in the end 
that thou wert thyself the instigator of the offence. 
Thou having betrayed me, I betray myself, and give the 
reins to impulse rather than to reason. The soul informs 
the body that he may now triumph, and flesh wishes no 
other sanction than opportunity. Excited by thy name, 
it has selected thee as the prize of its triumph ; and it is 
so proud of its success that it is willing hereafter to be- 
come thy drudge. I will share thy fortunes, whatever 
the result, — rise with thee or fall with thee, as it may 
happen, — but do not call it a want of conscience that 
I am willing to carry my devotion to this extreme. 

But the poet is a little surprised at his own 
readiness to surrender all, and does not find it 
easy to account for what proved an infatuation. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 153 

Son. ijo. Oh, from what source hast thou the won- 
derful power which subdues me even by thy insufficien- 
cies causing me to give the lie to what I see plainly, and to 
swear that even the brightness of the day is no grace ? 
Whence hast thou this art of burnishing bad things so, 
that in the worst of thy deeds I find such strength and 
assurance of skill ? Who taught thee how to make me 
love thee the more I discover just cause for hate ! Yet, 
though I love what others abhor, I do not partake of their 
abhorrence ; for if thy unworthiness has moved my love, 
the more worthy am I to be beloved. 

The poet is now fully alive to the fact that 
while he was playing the gallant, he was getting 
more and more absorbed in the object of his 
attentions, so that when he had discovered posi- 
tive grounds for breaking the connection alto- 
gether, he found himself the more enthralled. 

Son. 147. My love is like a fever, longing for that 
which may nourish the disease, and so preserving it by 
what it feeds on, — the uncertain and sickly appetite to 
please one who is not worth pleasing. My reason, the 
physician of my love, angry because his prescriptions are 
not observed, has left me, and I desperately cherish a 
desire, which, by rejecting its proper physic, is death. 
Past cure I am, since reason is past care, and almost 
frantic with an ever-increasing unrest. My thought and 
my discourse, like those of a madman, are roving at ran- 
dom from the truth, to which I endeavor in vain to give 
utterance. In proof of this, have I not sworn that thou 
art fair, when thou art as ugly as sin, and have I not 
thought thee bright, when thou art as black as night ? 



154 A New Study of 

How distracted the poet was we see in the 
uncertainties of conviction betrayed by the 
next poem. He writes : 

Son. 144. I have two objects of attachment, alternately 
of comfort and despair, which solicit me like two attend- 
ing spirits ; the better one is a man of rare fascination, 
and the worse a woman of dark complexion (intimating 
that it expressed her character, too). To lure me the 
sooner into her hell, the female evil tempts my better angel 
from my side, for her pride is capable of corrupting a 
saint into a devil, but whether he who was once my 
angel has already been changed into a fiend I do not yet 
know ; I only suspect it without being able to say it out- 
right ; nor, as they are both away from me, and close 
friends one to another, shall I probably ever get beyond 
a guess, until the bad one, by the ardor of her passion, 
has fired the good one out or completely driven him 
away. 

(6) A Rehtrn to Sanity. 

At length the poet becomes fully aware of 
his delusion and sees clearly whither it is lead- 
ing him, and he says to the soul which had 
whispered its treason to the senses, that, "bet- 
ter for the body to pine and perish than for 
the soul to suffer. Death can claim the body 
only as its price, and in subduing the body the 
soul triumphs over death." 

Son. 146. Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,' 

• This sonnet has in the second line ' ' my sinful earth these rebel 
powers that thee array," evidently a misprint, in which the end of the 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 155 

assailed by rebel powers, why dost thou starve within and 
suffer dearth while adorning thy -outward walls with 
such costly gayety ? Why lavish so much feeling and 
care upon a mansion which is of short lease, and soon 
must decay ? Shall worms, the inheritors of this excess 
eat up the burden thou hast brought upon thee ? Is 
this the end of the body, — then, O soul, live upon thy 
servant's loss, and let that starve, to increase thy store. 
Buy a divine term by selling an hour of dross ; be fed 
within, and without be rich no more, and thereby feed 
on death itself (natural death) which once ended there 
can be no spiritual death.' 

(Y ) A Second Recourse to the Friend. 

The poet, having discovered the entire com- 
pHcity of his friend in the offence of the lady, 
is naturally indignant, but remembering the 
youth and attractions of the young man, and 
the subtle seductions of the woman, is not dis- 
posed to be severe in his rebukes of the 
former. 

first line has run over upon the second. Many substitutes, such as 
"famished by," "besieged," "pressed," "hemmed in," etc., have 
been proposed, but none is needed if we leave out the words " that 
thee," and read 

" My sinful earth, that rebel powers array," — 
using array in the sense, which it often bears, of assail. 

' The Quarto has "pine within," meaning waste, as in Richard II. 
(v., I, 2). " Wliere shivering cold and sickness pine the clime," 
and sometimes, meaning starve {Venus and Adonis, 602). 
" Even as poor birds, deceiv'd by painted grapes, 
Do surfeit by the eye and pine the maw," 



156 A New Study of 

Son. pjr. How sweet and lovely dost thou render even 
the shame which, like a canker in a fragrant rose, spots 
the beauty of thy budding nature ! Oh, in what sweet- 
ness dost thou enclose thy offences ! The tongue that 
shall tell the story of thy sport with lascivious comments, 
shall find its dispraise in a kind of praise, and that the 
mere use of thy name will give a sort of blessing to an 
ill report. Oh, what a mansion do these vices possess, 
which have chosen thee for their habitation, where the 
veil of beauty covers every blot, and all things the eye 
looks upon turn to fairness. But take heed, dear heart, 
of the large privilege thus given to thee, lest thy better 
sense should be blunted by the idle use of thy charms, as 
the best tempered knife will lose its edge when abused. 

The poet continues in his forgiving mood 
and writes : 

Son. g6. Some persons ascribe thy faults to thy 
youth, and some to sheer wantonness, but the sad fact 
is, that thy faults themselves put on the aspect of graces, 
in the estimates of many, both high and low, who make 
no distinction between the two. As the basest jewel on 
the finger of an enthroned queen is well esteemed, so are 
thy errors translated into truths. But how many lambs 
might the fierce wolf betray if he could only make him- 
self look like a lamb, and how many gazers couldst thou 
lead astray if thou didst but use thy whole strength ! 

Finding, in the course of time, that his re- 
proofs, gentle as they were, had become a 
source of great dejection to the young man, 
the poet further relents and begs him not to 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 157 

grieve too much over the wrong that he had 
committed. 

Son. J5. Roses have thorns, clouds and eclipses stain 
both sun and moon, and the most loathsome cankers 
seek out the loveliest buds. All men have their faults, 
— and even I, in finding comparisons for thy trespass, as 
I am now doing, corrupt myself in trying to salve it 
over. Excusing thy sin even beyond what is necessary, 
whereby thine adverse party, good sense, becomes a sort 
of advocate of thy sensuality, I begin a plea against my- 
self, and make myself an accessory to the sweet thief by 
whom I have been robbed. 

But this estrangement, for which the poet 
took too much blame, perhaps, to himself, 
weighed upon the friend's mind until he en- 
deavored to bring about a reconciliation. The 
poet responds, most generously : 

Son. 120. That you were once unkind befriends me 
in this exigency, and the sorrow which I then felt because 
of it must needs incline me, since my nerves are not made 
of brass or hammered steel, to admit my later transgres- 
sion. If you are now shaken by my protracted unkindness, 
as I formerly was by yours, I know that you have passed a 
time of intense mental torment, — whilst I have behaved 
like a tyrant in giving no sign of what I had suffered by 
your conduct. Oh ! that our common night of woe had 
reminded us both, in the deepest sense, how hard the 
blows inflicted by true sorrow fall, so that I to you, and 
you to me, had tendered that humble salve of forgive- 
ness which best befits a wounded bosom. Your trespass, 



158 A New Study of 

then, was a fee paid for the ransom of mine, as mine is a 
fee paid for the ransom of yours : we have done an in- 
jury one to the other, let the one offset the other, — and 
for the future may forgiveness and reconciliation prevail. 

(8) Farewell to the Woman. 

To the woman the poet, while fully recog- 
nizing her offences, was no less generous, tak- 
ing the greater share of blame to himself : 

Son. 1^2. Thou knowest that in loving thee I as a 
married man am forsworn ; but thou art twice for- 
sworn, — once, by breaking thy marital vows, and again 
by thy infidelity to me. Yet how can I reproach thee 
for the violation of two oaths, when I am guilty of the 
breach of twenty ? Of the two of us 1 am the more per- 
jured, for, since all honest faith in thee was lost, my 
oaths have been so many deceptions. I have sworn to 
thy kindness, to thy truth, and to thy constancy, and 
have given eyes even to blindness in order to place thee 
in a brighter light, and yet in every case I have sworn 
against a better knowledge.^ 

But the time had come for a final separa- 
tion, and the poet wrote thus : 

Son. 87. Farewell ! thou art too dear for my possess- 
ing," (/. e., thou hast cost me too much in anxiety and 

' We can scarcely believe that Prof. Dowdenhad read this sonnet, 
when he says of it that it makes the woman ' ' as guilty or even more 
guilty," than the poet, — since the single object of the poet is to put 
the chief blame upon himself ; she had violated two oaths, but he 
had violated twenty. 

^ It is not a common locution to speak of possessing a man. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 159 

sorrow for the continuance of our relations ;) and it is 
probable that thou art conscious of the estimation in 
which thou art held. Thy youth is a privilege that en- 
titles thee to release,' whilst my claim upon thee is 
limited. How do I hold thee at all, except by thine own 
concession, which is gratuitous, and nothing in me justi- 
fies such a gift. Thou gavest me thyself,* not knowing 
thine own value, or else mistaking me on whom the wealth 
was conferred. Founded on a misconception, thy favor is 
now, on a better judgment, going back to its source. I 
have had thee simply as a king has a flattering dream in 
his sleep, which, on awaking, proves to be nothing at 
all, — or nothing more than a dream.* 

Shakespeare's readiness to forgive rather 
than punish wrongs, of which we have instan- 
ces in the Two Geritlemen of Verona^ Measiire 
for Measure^ All's Well, Cymbeliney the Win- 
ter s Tale and The Tempest, has been imputed 
to him by some critics as a weakness of moral 
judgment : his sympathy for the criminal, they 
allege, overcomes his detestation of the crime. 
It should be remembered, however, that 
Shakespeare had a deeper insight into life, as 
" a web of mingled yarn, — of good and ill 

' The Quarto reads " the charter of thy worth," meaning, I think, 
" of thy youth." The word " charter" came to mean a privilege. 
See Sonnet 6i, where it is so used. 

2 " Thou gavest me thyself " may be said of a woman but not of a 
man. 

^ How ineffably absurd all this would seem, if we supposed it ad- 
dressed to a young man, while, addressed to a young woman, it is 
full of a large-hearted tenderness. 



i6o A New Study of 

together," than others, and was able to dis- 
tribute his approval or disapproval between 
the parties to an action with a more perfect 
impartiality. Like Prospero, he could say : 

" Though with their high wrongs, I am struck to the 

quick, 
Yet with my nobler reason 'gainst my fury 
Do I take part : the rarer action is 
In virtue than in vengeance." 

— Tempest {y.^ i, 25). 

That he was not indifferent to the character 
of the offence in the present case is shown by 
that terrible denunciation of it, in which a 
volume of meaning is condensed into fourteen 
lines. 

Son. I2g. Lust in action is the plunging of the 
better part of one's nature in a pool of filth. Even in 
contemplation it is false, malignant, destructive, and 
loathsome. Yea, it is savage, reckless, brutal, and re- 
pulsive. It is no sooner enjoyed than it is despised. 
Past reason hunted and past reason hated, it is a mad- 
ness in pursuit and a madness in possession. As past, 
present, and to come alike an extreme ; a joy in prospect, 
a woe in retrospect. All men know this well, and yet 
they do not shun it, but seek a seeming heaven which 
only leads to actual hell. 

(p) A Glance towards Home. 

Meanwhile, what has become of the sweet 
Anne, of whose charms we read such tender 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare i6i 

records a few pages back ? She was far off in 
the country, caring for the children, and un- 
conscious of what was going on in the great 
city. But was she kept in ignorance of the 
affair ? I think not. The poet, though self-in- 
dulgent and misled by his passions, was an 
honest fellow, after all, and sooner or later con- 
fessed his offence with all proper promises of 
repentance and amendment. Not a few tears 
were doubtless shed by the wife, but she knew 
the worth of the man, and in due time for- 
gave him, as women will forgive. In this 
condition of things, the poet wrote this appeal : 

Son. log. Oh ! never say that I was false at heart, 
whatever my aberrations may have been ; I might as 
easily depart from my own inmost self, as from my soul, 
which is enclosed in thy bosom. That is the real home 
of my love, and if I have wandered, like one who travels 
abroad, I have returned again, bringing the waters of 
true repentance to wash away my stain. Oh ! do not 
believe, though in my nature reigned all kinds of frail- 
ties, that I could be so preposterously wrenched as to 
leave for nothing the sum of all good ; for there is nothing 
in the wide universe but thee, my Rose, and thou art to 
me (as I wrote of old, see Son, 31), the all in all. 

Nor was this a mere plea in abatement to 
the injured one, for in a general summing-up 
of the affair, made to himself, he uses even 
stronger language. He says : 



1 62 A New Study of 

Son. iig. What potions have I drunk of siren tears, 
distilled from limbecks foul as hell within, alternating 
fea"i:s with hopes and hopes with fears, and losing all in the 
very moment of victory ! What wretched errors has 
my heart entertained, even when it thought itself most 
happy? How have my eyes been wrenched from their 
sockets in the fits of a delirious fever ! And yet there is 
some benefit even in evil, for I find that the better can 
be made still better by it, and that love which has been 
ruined, when it is builded anew, grows fairer, and 
stronger, and broader than it was at first. Therefore if 
I return rebuked to the one source of my contentment, I 
have gained by means of the evil more than I have lost. 

Shakespeare did not mean by this philos- 
ophy, which is very profound, I think, that we 
should deliberately do wrong in order to reap 
the benefits of a recovery. But he saw that 
while the existence of evil is a great mystery, 
it is a still greater mystery that out of the 
struggle against it should come a higher good 
than that which the evil destroyed. The effort 
to overcome a fall in morals produces qualities 
we should not have had without the necessity 
for the effort. Indeed, may we not infer in 
Shakespeare's own case that his temporary 
lapses in the sad experiences of the episode 
had helped to open his mind to a discernment 
of what is true, lovely, and divine in female 
character, which he would not have otherwise 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 163 

had ? In his earlier plays, the princesses of 
Loves Labor's Lost, the Julia and Sylvia in 
the Two Gentlemen of Verona, the Adrian a, 
etc., of the Comedy of Errors, though not 
commonplace women, are simply pleasing and 
nothing more. But soon we meet in his books 
with Juliet, Portia, Viola, Rosalind, Beatrice, 
Desdemona, — the second Portia, — the old 
Countess of Roussillon, Cordelia, Perdita, 
Hermione, Miranda, Imogen, — in short, with 
twenty or more female types that outnumber 
and excel all that Grecian, Italian, or Spanish 
genius had given us before. Even modern 
fiction, filled as it is with female loveliness, 
from Fielding and Richardson to de Balzac, 
Sir Walter Scott, Thackeray, Dickens, and 
George Eliot, has not attained the height or 
fulness of Shakespeare.^ 

I have treated these sonnets as if they were 
transcripts of reality, because there is an ear- 
nestness and depth of feeling in most of them 
which it seems to me could only have come 
from experience. By this I do not mean, 

' None the less, George Brandes, in his recent volumes on the 
poet, has the temerity to contend that there was a time when 
Shakespeare was a complete misogamist ; although there is scarcely 
a play of his, written after his first period, in which some woman 
does not shine forth, even in the murkiest of atmospheres as an 
angel direct from heaven. 



1 64 A New Study of 

however, that the sonnets, as we have them 
now, were actually sent by the poet to the per- 
sons they concern. Affairs of the kind are 
not commonly handled in that way. What I 
do mean is that the various situations disclosed 
were not wholly imaginary, — pure inventions 
of the writer, — but real events, which the 
poet, according to his plan, revealed in Sonnet 
']'], turned into verse afterwards, as a memorial 
of a most important and instructive part of 
his life. Poets, in all ages, from Anacreon 
and Horace, to Goethe> Burns, and Byron, have 
been particularly susceptible to the tender pas- 
sion, but have not always been careful as to its 
metes and bounds. 

We have, perhaps, a gleam of historical evi- 
dence as to a real experience lying back of 
these sonnets in a book called Willobies 
Avisa, published in 1594, a few months later 
than Shakespeare's " Rape of Lucrece," where 
he is mentioned as the author of that volume.^ 

' Only a few copies of this book were printed in 1880, under the 
editorship of Dr. Grosart. For a sight of one of these (No. 97) 
I am indebted to the kindness of my accomplished friend, Horace 
Howard Furness, the editor of the fine new Variorum. The original 
title-page reads : " Willobie, his Avisa, a true picture of a modest 
maid, and of a chaste and constant wife. . . Imprinted at London, 
by John Windet, 1594." In addition to the main poem, this later 
volume has three others, an "Atrologie," 1596; "The Victory of 
English Chastity," 1596 ; and " Penelope's Complaint," 1596. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 165 

In some prefatory verses by Abel Emel, or 
Heremelon, it says : 

'' Yet Tarquyne pluckt his glistening grape 

And Shakespeare paints poor Lucrece's ' rape.' " 

This was the first time Shakespeare's name 
had appeared in print, outside of his own 
works. 

What deserves note in A visa, is a prose in- 
troduction to Canto XLIV., which contains 
this singular passage : " H. W. [Henry Wil- 
lobie] being sodenly affected with the conta- 
geon of a fantastical fit, at the first sight of 
A[visa] pyneth a while in secret griefe, — at 
length not able any longer to endure the burn- 
ing heate of so feruent a humour, bewrayeth 
the secrecy of his disease unto a familiar 
frend. W. S. [supposed to be William Shake- 
speare] who not long before had tryed the 
curtesy of the like passion, and was now newly 
recovered of the infection ; yet finding his 
frend let bloud in the same vaine, he took 
pleasure for a tyme to see him bleed & in 
steed of stopping the issue he inlargeth the 
wound, with the sharp razor of a willing con- 
ceit, perswading him that he thought it a mat- 
ter very easy to be compassed, & no doubt with 
payne, diligence, & in some cost of tyme to be 
obtayned. Thus, this miserable comforter, — 



1 66 A New Study of 

comforting his frend with an impossibilitie, 
eyther for that he now would secretly laugh 
at his frends folly that had giuen not long 
before unto others to laugh at his owne, or 
because he would see whether another could 
play his part better than himselfe. & in vew- 
ing a far off the course of the louing Comedy, — 
determined to see whether it would sort to 
a happier end for this new actor than it did for 
the old player, &c." 

Dr. Grosart is of opinion that the W. S. 
here means Shakespeare for several reasons : 
among them the familiar and friendly tone of 
the allusion in the commendatory verse ; the 
obvious implications of the Introduction ; a 
certain correspondence between the advice he 
gives and the sentiment of some of his son- 
nets, and the fact that, by his Venus and 
Adonis he had become a sort of poetical au- 
thority in affairs of the heart. These are per- 
haps slender grounds for the inference, but 
the discussion has an interest of curiosity, 
which justifies a passing attention. 

VI. THE poet's communion WITH THE 

HIGHER MUSE. 

In all ages of the world the human mind has 
been disposed to refer its states of unusual 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 167 

exaltation to an influence or agency, superior to 
itself and yet a part of itself. Not only poets 
and artists but orators and religious enthusiasts 
credit their moments of inspiration, as they are 
called, to this mysterious source. Among the 
ancients the Greeks created a whole new realm 
of gods and goddesses, ** the golden brood of 
great Apollo's wit," who presided over every in- 
terest of humanity. They had their Muses of 
poetry, of history, of the drama, of the dance, 
and of domestic life, etc. And a good deal of 
this mythology has, in spite of revolutions of 
thought and manners in other respects, sur- 
vived up to the present time. Every poetaster 
still has a muse, which he invokes with a fervor 
inversely proportioned to the state of his 
pocket. In Shakespeare's day the Muses were 
so far extant that Spenser, in his Teares of the 
Muses, assumes that they are still consulting 
with each other, and deploring with tears and 
lamentation the decay of all real learning. 

Beyond and above these traditionary genii, 
certain of the greater poets have had each a ge- 
nius of his own, to which he could pray for 
assistance as he might need. Three thousand 
years ago old Homer began : " Oh, Goddess, 
sing, — sing the wrath of Peleus's son, the deadly 
wrath that brought unnumbered wars upon the 



1 68 A New Study of 

Greeks, and swept so many souls to Hades." 
Virgil, following Homer, cried like him to the 
celestial deities, and in the Middle Ages, when 
Virgil had been deified, he was the tutelary 
guide and inspirer of Dante. In more recent 
times the austere Milton was not satisfied with 
anything less than that celestial light which on 
the top of Horeb and of Sinai shone, asking it 
to irradiate his soul in all its parts, " that he 
might see and tell of things invisible to mortal 
sight." Goethe, too, in a general introduction 
to his poems, informs us of an angelic form 
who had given him the choicest gifts of earth, 
and poured into his burning heart the balm of 
a heavenly rest.^ Every modern reader, in this 
connection, will recall Shelley's magnificent 
" Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," in which he 
avers that : 

"The awful shadow of some unseen power floats, 
though unseen, among us, visiting this various world 
with an inconstant wing like summer wind that creeps 
from flower to flower, most dear, yet dearer for its 
mystery." 

Shelley appeals to this power as : 

" The spirit of beauty, that doth consecrate with thine 
own hues all thou dost shine upon of human thought or 
form." 

' The Peace, as we shall see hereafter, that Shakespeare desired. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 169 

Wordsworth, poet of nature as he was, yet 
called upon Urania for guidance, '' or a gentler 
Muse, if such descend to earth, or dwell in 
highest heaven." This he felt as " a Presence 
that disturbed him with the joy of elevated 
thought," 

" Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean, and the living air 
And the blue sky, and in the Mind of Man." 

Or, better still for our purpose, is a sonnet of 
Tennyson, published in his edition of 1835, 
which is also an address to Beauty : 

" O Beauty, passing Beauty ! sweetest sweet ! 
How canst thou let me waste my youth in sighs ? 
I only ask to sit beside thy feet, 
Thou knowest I dare not look into thine eyes. 
Might I but kiss thy hand ! I dare not fold 
My arms about thee — scarcely dare I speak. 
And nothing seems to me so wild and bold 
As with one kiss to touch thy blessed cheek. 
Methinks if I should kiss thee, no control 
Within the thrilling brain could keep afloat 
The subtle spirit. Even while I spoke, 
The bare word kiss hath made my inmost soul 
To tremble like a lute-string ere the note 
Hath melted in the silence that it broke." 

You will remark that the poet here has 
made the quality of Beauty not only an ideal, 
but an actual living person endowed with 



I70 A New Study of 

nearly every human attribute. It has a form 
which he can fold in his arms, eyes to look 
into, hands to touch, cheeks and lips to kiss, 
and a soul to which his own inmost soul is akin, 
but of which in its awful perfection he scarcely 
ventures to think. 

Now, Shakespeare, the prince of poets, was 
no exception to the generality of poets in 
either of these respects. He has recognized 
the ordinary muses more than seventeen times 
in the Sonnets themselves : once as " all the 
muses," and the "old nine," once as a muse 
belonging to another poet, and in other in- 
stances as his own. So, in a play he refers 
to the ** Thrice three Muses, dead in poverty " ; 
and in the chorus to Henry V. he demands 
a " Muse of Fire to ascend the highest heaven 
of invention," or of imagination. It would have 
been strange, indeed, if the creator of the 
fairy world, who trod the heights where Hamlet 
thought and Prospero put forth his weird 
enchantments, had found no intimate compan- 
ion in that lofty realm. Yet such he possessed, 
and it was to him what the goddesses were 
to Homer and Virgil, or what the celestial 
and intellectual lights have been to the 
moderns. If you ask what authority I have 
for this bold assertion, I answer, the poet's 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 171 

own words, addressing his ordinary, every- 
day muse, and revealing a much higher Muse, 
which scarcely admit of any other interpreta- 
tion. Let me cite Sonnet 38, as it stands : 

How can my Muse want subject to invent. 

While Thou dost breathe, that pour'st into my verse 

Thine own sweet argument, too excellent 

For every vulgar paper to rehearse ? 

O, give Thyself the thanks, if aught in me 

Worthy perusal stand against Thy sight ; 

For who 's so dumb that cannot write to Thee, 

When Thou Thyself dost give invention light ? 

Be Thou the tenth Muse, ten times more in worth 

Than those old nine which rimers invocate ; 

And he that calls on Thee, let him bring forth 

Eternal numbers to outlive long date. 

If my slight Muse do please these curious days,' 
The pain be mine, but Thine shall be the praise. 

One question here comes to the fore : Who 
is the Thou or Thee to whom the lines are 
directed? If we say, with the commentators 
almost en masse, " the young personal friend 
we find in other sonnets," we run plump 
against a most unusual and staggering assump- 
tion. In all ages in which literature has 
accepted such beings as muses, they have 
been regarded as belonging to an ideal sphere, 

^The Quarto has: These curious days," meaning fastidious or 
critical, as in ''AlVs Well That Ends IVell{i., 2, 20). 



172 A New Study of 

and I think without exception were females. 
But here, according to Dowden and the others, 
we encounter for the first time a Muse who 
wore a beard and went about in top-boots, 
a stalwart young fellow of flesh and blood 
and the most unmistakable masculine propen- 
sities, — yet, none the less, a supreme source of 
poetry, said to be ten times superior to any of 
the " old nine," in their own line, and capable 
of inspiring verses that will outlast all time. 
What a preposterous exaggeration ! 

In more than fifty of the Sonnets, or one 
third of the whole set, the writer addresses 
this imaginary creation as a living person. 
Its intimacy and favor he implores — its dis- 
favor he deprecates ; it is his sweetest love, 
his dearest friend, and yet a frowning en- 
emy ; it is his guide, his critic, and his judge, 
whose occasional caprices and desertions he 
chides, though it be at one with beauty, truth, 
and goodness, — and the idea of it, as he said In 
one of his plays afterwards, " did sweetly creep 
into the eye and body of his soul, with every 
lovely organ apparelled in most precious habits, 
most moving-delicate, and full of life." 

Shakespeare, when he began to write, was 
not a scholar, as we have already shown, or, at 
least, not a classical scholar. He had read, 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 173 

doubtless, all the popular literature of the time, 
romances, chronicles, and folk-songs of every 
kind, but he was not taught in the philosophy 
of the poetic function. What is now called 
the Science of Esthetics was not yet a distinct 
branch of study, and the subject, so far as it 
had been treated at all in the vernacular, was 
handled in a superficial and perfunctory way, 
as in Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie, and 
Sidney's Defence of Poesie. But on his arrival 
in London, where he ran against the wits of 
the universities, who were full of scholastic 
learning and inclined to disputation, he began 
to think of the nature and functions of that 
imaginative power of which he was destined to 
be the most illustrious example. 

( I ) The Vision Divine. 

It was doubtless an intuition with him that as 
all art must have two sides or aspects, — a soul 
and a body, — the one ideal or imaginative, in 
which insight, passion, and thought are domi- 
nant, and the other practical, or executive, in 
which language, measure, or rhythm are in- 
volved, the subject must be divided as Words- 
worth has since divided it in The Vision and 
the Faculty Divine. 

Our poet's earliest visions seem to have 



174 A New Study of 

come to him as dreams. He writes to the 
Higher Muse thus : 

When most I wink,' mine eyes see the best, for, while 
in the daytime they view things without paying them 
particular attention, in the dreams of sleep they look on 
Thee and, though but partially illuminated, are brightly 
directed through the darkness. O Thou,* whose mere 
image or shadow lends brightness to the shades of the 
night, how pleasantly would the original, which casts 
the shadow, appear in the clear day with its much clearer 
light ! How blessed would mine eyes be made, I repeat, 
since in the dark and through heavy slumber Thy beauti- 
ful yet imperfect shape doth linger on my sightless orbs, 
if they could behold Thee in a more living way. Indeed, 
all days are nights to me until I look on Thee, and all 
nights are days, when Thou comest to me even in 
dreams ! 

Yet not alone in the night but in the day, 
the vision haunts the poet, and he recognizes it 
in the ideaHsing tendency which is given to his 
mind. He says : 

Son. 113. Since I have felt your influence,^ mine eye 
is in my mind and that which governs me in going about, 
divides its functions, and is partly blind. It seems to 
see, but really does not see ! For there is no form which 

'In several places Shakespeare uses "wink" as the synonym for 
shutting the eyes, or excluding the external world. 

^The Quarto has " then thou," which impairs the grammar. 

" The Quarto has, " since I left you," which makes no sense, and 
" left " is probably the letters of " felt " transposed. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 175 

it transmits to the soul, whether bird or flower, or any- 
thing else that it may seize,' in the shaping of whose 
aspects the mind has no part : it does not retain its own 
direct vision, for, be it the most ordinary object of 
sight, the gentlest look or the rudest structure, the 
mountain or the sea, the day or night, a crow or a dove, 
it is instantly invested with Your features. Replete with 
You, and incapable of more, my most true mind — or my 
mind which is faithful to your inspirations — renders my 
eyes untrue." 

" Or," the poet goes on to argue, " may not 
this seeming dominance of the mind over the 
sense be a sort of illusion, or self-imposition." 

Son. 114. Or may it not be that the mind " crown'd," 
or raised to a sort of royal consciousness by Your presence 
drinks in the monarch's common plague — flattery ? Or, 
shall I not rather say that while the eye sees correctly 
enough, my love for You teaches it an alchemy which 
transforms the most monstrous and chaotic sights into 
angelic shapes, thereby creating the very best out of 
the very worst ? I fear the first; I fear the flattery of 
the sense, and that my kingly mind swallows the bait 
as the sense knows what is likely to agree with its taste, 

' The Quarto uses "latch" in the sense of seizing or taking hold 
of. See Macbeth (iv., 3, 195). 

'^ The closing line of the Quarto has been a puzzle to the critics : 
" My most true mind maketh mine untrue." Collier suggested, 
" maketh mine eyne untrue," which yields the sense as I give it in 
the paraphrases. The contrast is between the sight of the mind and 
the sight of the sense, and the poet avers that the former renders the 
latter uncertain. That this is his meaning is clear from the next son- 
net, in which he suggests that his " eye may see true," and yet his 
mind be exposed to illusions. 



176 A New Study of 

and prepares the cup for the palate. If that cup be 
mixed with foul ingredients it is a smaller fault in the 
inind to receive it, when the sense loves it and begins 
the imposition. 

This sonnet is exceedingly subtle, and one 
suspects some corruption of the text, but as 
near as I can get at it, the poet anticipated 
what he afterwards said more clearly as to the 
double function of the imagination. In A 
MidsMmmer Night's Dream (n., i, 7-16), where 
he illustrates the differences between its regu- 
lar and its irregular action, he says : 

" The lunatic, the lover, and the poet 
Are of imagination all compact. 
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold, — 
That is, the madman : the lover, all as frantic, 
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt : " 

Whereas, he continues : 

" The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, 
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to 

heaven, 
And as imagination bodies forth 
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing 
A local habitation and a name." ' 

' It is needless to point out how clearly in these last lines the poet 
recognizes the distinction between the ideal and the practical, the 
conception and the execution, the eye and the pen, or the Vision and 
the Faculty, on which we have already remarked. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 177 

It is impossible, without falling into gravest 
absurdities, to construe the sonnet, as Dow- 
den does, as an effort of the poet to tell his 
"friend" that his (the poet's) mind and sense 
are alike filled with his perfections. " In Son- 
net 112," says the critic, "the poet tells how 
his ear is stopped to all other voices but one 
beloved voice " (which decides for him even as 
to what is right and wrong), " but here the poet 
tells how that his eyes see things only as related 
to his friend." He, however," tells " a great deal 
more than that, asserting that whatever he 
sees, be it bird, or flower, or shape of any kind, 
the rudest or gentlest sight, a sweet look or a 
huge structure, a mountain or the sea, a crow 
or a dove — it is at once invested with "your 
features." One can easily conceive how the 
objects of external nature can take on ideal 
forms (as all poetry shows), but it is not easy 
to conceive the process by which they take 
on the particular features of an individual. 

The poet is deeply perplexed by this won- 
drous power which changes things into 
thoughts, and he inquires further : 

Son. ^3. What is your substance, or whereof are you 
made, that millions of strange shadows tend upon 
you, every one of which has its own peculiar nuance, 
while you are one and individual. Describe Adonis 



178 A New Study of 

(the classic model of masculine beauty), and the repre- 
sentation will be but a poor counterfeit of You ; set upon 
Helen's cheek' all female perfections and it will only 
be You again arrayed in Grecian tires. Indeed, speak 
of the spring and foison of the year [meaning the autumn 
or harvest of the year], and what is the one but a sym- 
bol of Your beauty, and the other of Your bounty ? We 
recognize You in every blessed shape we know ; in every 
external grace as in every artistic creation You have 
some part ; but you are like none of them, and none of 
them is like you, in constancy of character. 

How absolutely absurd it is to suppose, as 
the critics do, that all this could be said of 
and to an ordinary personal friend ; that he had 
a million shadows, unlike poor Peter Schlemihl, 
who had none ; that Adonis was a foil to 
him ; that Helen was himself, dressed off in 
Grecian habiliments ; and, more still, that all 
the beautiful aspects of nature — the bright 
dawns, the solemn eves, the rippling streams, 
the far-off shimmer of the hills, and the grand 
roll of the ocean — were no more than efforts 
of nature to embody his graces. Yet, in the 
aesthetic sense, is not the meaning here trans- 
parent and exceedingly beautiful ? 

I cannot but add of the thought of the 
last line that, in the endless variety and 

'That face, as Marlowe wrote, "which launched a thousand 
ships to burn the topless towers of Ilium " ; imitated by Shakes- 
peare in Troilus and Cressida (ii., 2, 82). 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 179 

changeableness of external beauty, the ideal, 
which has a part in all, is alone constant, seems 
to be an anticipation of a passage in Ruskin, 
where he says : 

" There is no bush on the face of the globe exactly 
like another bush ; there are no two trees in the forest 
whose boughs bend into the same network ; nor two 
leaves on the same tree which could not be told from 
another ; nor two waves of the same sea exactly alike ; 
yet out of this mass of various and agreeing beauty, the 
conception of the constant character, the ideal form 
hinted at by all, yet assured by none, is fixed upon by 
the imagination for its standard of truth." ' 

The poet becomes more definite still in his 
delineation of the Higher Muse, when he pro- 
ceeds to impute to it all possible human attri- 
butes, female as well as male. Our country- 
man, Mr. E. C. Stedman, in his fine Essay on 
the Nattire and Elements of Poetry^ says that 
the artistic temperament is androgynous, or 
double-sexed, — feminine in its sensitiveness 
and refinement, and masculine in its strength 
and energy. He was, doubtless, not aware that 
Shakespeare had before him gone so far as to 
represent the personified genius of all art itself 
as both man and woman. 

Son. 20. Thou master-mistress of my devotion [he 
exclaims], thou hast a woman's face, formed by nature's 
^ The True and the Beautifiil, p. 59. 



i8o A New Study of 

own hand * ; thou hast a woman's gentle disposition, but 
not liable to swift caprices, as some false women are.' 
Thou hast an eye more bright and constant than any 
woman's and which lends a glory to every object on 
which it falls. A man however in form,' to whose power 
all forms are subject that win the admiration of men, or 
incite the wonder of women * : and, for a woman wert 
thou first created (that is, conceived in the brains of 
the older poets, who made all their Muses and Graces 
female), till Nature as she wrought Thee in that medium, 
fell in love with the result, and added those universal 
qualities which defeated me of all thought of appropriat- 
ing Thee to myself. But, because Thou art thus marked 
out for the pleasure of all men,* still give me Thy love, 
and I will make the use of it a treasure for the world.* 

* As Viola puts it in Twelfth Night : 

" ' T is beauty truly blent whose red and white 
Nature's own sweet and cunning hand laid on." 

''The Quarto has "not given to shifting change, as is false 
woman's fashion." And Dowden quotes Spenser (^Faerie Queene, 
iii., I, 41), which says : " Her wanton eyes, ill signs of womanhood, 
did roll too lightly." 

^ The Quarto says : " A man in hew, all Hews in his controlling," 
where hew means form, as in Sonnets 82 and 104, and in other 
passages cited by the commentators. 

■* "All forms in his controlling," seems to me very significant. 
Dowden says it means " a man in form and appearance having mas- 
tery of all forms, in that of his, which shall," etc. ; and Irving's 
editor puts it, "a man in form, and all forms are subject to his 
power (controlling) " — which are strange things to allege of any 
human form, — in fact unintelligible, but, said of an ideal genius 
or spirit, quite pertinent and easily understood. 

^ "All men," I think it should be, not " all women," as printed 
in the Quarto. 

® As he did in his subsequent plays. 

The last four or five lines of this sonnet are hopelessly 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare i8i 

Having referred to the Muses and Graces, 
as the work of ancient poets and to the bril- 
hant forms of beauty they had left behind 
them, not forgetting what he had said (Son- 
nets 67, 68) as to the function of the true poet 
in keeping up the standards of those antique 
days when the creation of beauty was as 
spontaneous as the birth of flowers, our poet 
still asks if antiquity had exhausted the labor 
of invention. 

Soti. jp. If there be nothing new, but that which is has 
been before, how we dekide our brains in laboring by 
invention to bring forth what must be only " the second 
burden of a former child " ! Oh, that our records of 
past achievements could by a backward look of only 
five centuries show me in some antique book, one writ- 
ten when the mind first began to express itself in wri- 
ting, what conception they had formed of the poetic 
ideal. What had the old world to say of that wonder- 
ful combination of qualities which we find in Your 
frame ? In what respects was it better than ours, or in 
'what respects has it been improved upon? or whether 
any change that has taken place has been a mere going 
about, or a revolution without progress. I am quite 

mixed. To say nothing of such rhymes as "created" and "de- 
feated," or "a-doting" and "nothing," or the immediate repeti- 
tion of "by addition" and "by adding," there is no sense in them 
as they stand. Twist the final couplet as you please, the outcome is 
bathos, if not nonsense. It is impossible to reconstruct the passage, 
and we can only guess at the probable meaning from the context, 
and that guess must be one that shall, at least, be consistent with 
the fine thought of the outset, and not a vulgarism. 



i82 A New Study of 

sure myself that the wits of former ages gave their admi- 
ration to objects worse than those which occupy us in 
these days.* 

He pursues the same thought in reference 
to a later time, the days of chivalry. 

Soil. io6. When I see in the chronicles of time now 
gone to waste (/. e., in the old rhymed romances) descrip- 
tions of the fairest wights, wherein the ideals of beauty 
make the old rhymes beautiful as they extol dear ladies ^ 
and lovely knights, then I recall in the very blazonry of 
sweet beauty at its best — whether of hand, or foot, or 
eye, or brow, that those antique writers endeavored to 
express the beauty that You exhibit now. Their praises 
therefore are but prophecies of these our times, prefig- 
uring You ; — but inasmuch as they saw not with true 
discerning eyes, they did not have skill enough to sing 
your true excellence. Even we of the present day, who 
see more clearly, have eyes to wonder,^ but lack the 
tongue adequately to express what we behold. 

Satisfied with the glimpses he had attained, 
the poet exclaims, in a moment of fluctuating 

' Of the question raised by Shakespeare in this sonnet, Mr. Lowell 
(vol. iii., p. 32,) has since said that " the true poetic imagination is of 
one quality, whether it be ancient or modern, and equally subject to 
the laws of grace, of proportion, of design, in whose free service and 
in that alone it can become Art," but Shakespeare adds that while 
this quality is supreme and unchangeable our thought of it is ever on 
the advance, requiring new forms of words for its expression. 

* The Quarto has "ladies dead," which would read better as 
"ladies dear," I think. 

2 The Quarto has "composite wonder," a phrase easily applied to 
an ideal but hardly to an actual man. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 183 

Son. 75. You are, to my thought, like food to Hfe, or 
like timely showers to the earth, and to acquire the 
peace which You can bring, I strive with myself, as a 
miser does with his gold ; now proud to possess it, and 
anon doubting whether the filching age will not steal 
his treasure ; now counting it best to be alone with you 
(/. e., in silent communion), and then eager that the world 
may witness my delight. I am sometimes full with 
feasting on the sight of You, and at others pining for a 
look ; possessing or pursuing no pleasure but what is 
had, or must be had, from Your presence. Thus I sur- 
feit or starve from day to day — like a glutton who has 
all or nothing.' 

In this fluctuation of feeling, the poet calls 
upon the Muse to renew its force. 

Son. ^6. Let it not be said that the edge of a fine 
affection is blunter than that of a coarse appetite, which, 
satiated to-day, is to-morrow sharpened to its former 
keenness. So, love, although to-day Thou fillest Thy 
hungry eyes until they close with fulness, to-morrow 
look again, and do not kill thy spirit with a perpetual 
dulness. Let the sad interims between our commu- 
nions seem like an ocean which parts the shores, where 
two newly betrothed lovers daily come, and when they 
see their love returned, are made more blessed by the 
sight ; or call that interim a winter, which, though full 
of care and anxiety, renders summer more welcome 
when it comes, and thrice more wished for because it 
is rare. 

But this thought of the inconstancy of his 

' The Quarto reads " gluttoning on all," or " all away." 



1 84 A New Study of 

pleasure disturbs him with the fear that it 
might be taken away from him altogether 
under the influences of time. He writes : 

Son. 64. When I have seen the richest and proudest 
monuments of an outworn and buried age defaced by 
the fell hand of Time, — when I have seen lofty towers 
razed to the ground and eternal brass a slave to its 
deadly rage ; when I have seen the hungry ocean eating 
up the land, and the land invading the ocean, — gain 
following loss and loss following gain, — and this inter- 
change of condition, itself subject to overthrow, the 
contemplation of such ruin has made me think that Time 
may even come and take the object of my love away ; 
the thought of which is death to me, and I cannot 
choose but weep to possess that which I so much dread 
to lose. 

In the same tone the poet continues : 

Son. 6j. If brass and atone, if earth and sea succumb 
to time, how can beauty, whose action is no stronger 
than that of a flower, hold its place ? How can the 
honeyed breath of summer withstand the destructive siege 
of battering days, when impregnable rocks and gates of 
steel are unable to resist their onslaughts? Oh, fear- 
ful meditation ! Where shall the best jewel that Time 
produces — Beauty — find an escape from its wallet of 
oblivion ? ' What mighty hand can hold his swift foot 
back, or who can forbid his spoliations? Oh, none, 
none, the poet exclaims as if in despair, unless, — the 

1 As to the wallet of Time, see Troilus ajtd Cressida (iii., 3, 145) ; 
also Sonnet 63. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 185 

saving thought comes to him, — unless, this miracle may 
be achieved — that in black ink Beauty may be enshrined 
forever. 

Yes, there we have it ! Art, or " the faculty 
divine," — the writing of verse, — may be the 
lasting preservative of the " vision divine." 
Art embodies and perpetuates the airy noth- 
ings that would otherwise fly like down upon 
the winds ; Art is the miracle of creation re- 
newed ; and, touched by its magic wand, the 
unsubstantial dreams of the night (of which we 
once heard ^) become the glory of an everlast- 
ing day. 

How amazing it all is, the poet continues. 

So7i. do. The minutes of our lives are hastening to 
the end, like the waves of the sea, which rush to the 
shore, each changing place with that which precedes it, 
and yet ever toiling onward. Our very nature,* once 
launched into the great ocean of light, wends its way to 
its maturity, which having reached, it is pursued by 
malignant eclipses that fight against its glory. Time* 
which gives all, destroys all : ' it transfixes the bloom of 
youth, digs trenches in the brow of the fairest, and feeds 
on the rarest of Nature's truths ; and there is nothing 

' See Sonnet 43. 

''The Quarto has "Nativity once in the main of light." Nativity 
means birth, so that the line might read, " launched by birth into 
the great main of light, we crawl to maturity." 

*Lucrece says of Time, 

" Thou nursest all, and murderest all that are." 



i86 ' A New Study of 

which its scythe does not seem to mow down. Yet, — 
mark it, — despite of this cruel ravage, my little verse in 
praise of thy excellency shall remain to all future ages. 

( 2 ) The Faculty Divine. 

But how is the poet to seize the power 
capable of such an achievement ? How is he 
to work this miracle ? How is he to acquire 
the art, which, as he expressed it at a later 
day, — " bodies forth the form of things unseen, 
turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothings 
a habitation and a name," or a home in 
the actual world ? At the very outset of his 
efforts he encounters an almost insurmounta- 
ble obstacle in his self-love, by which he means 
not his selfishness in a moral sense, but his 
strong intellectual predisposition. He writes : 

Son. 62. The sin of self-love not only directs my 
eyes, but pervades my whole being. It is so rooted in 
my nature that it seems ineradicable, or beyond remedy. 
Methinks no appearance so gracious as my own, no shape 
so true, and no truth of such importance. My own 
superiority, in my own estimation, surpasses all the 
excellences of all others. But when reflection shows me 
my real self, degraded and disfigured by the tan of 
antiquity,^ I take a contrary view, and find a self-love so 

'The Quarto has "beated and chopt with tann'd antiquity," 
which may mean as I have given it above ; or it may mean, as some 
critics have suggested, " steeped in and mixed up with the stains of 
antiquity," — drawing the figure from the process of tanning hides into 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 187 

intense, not love but iniquity. ' T is Thee, my better self, 
that I praise as myself and so substitute a devotion to old 
faults for the love of Thy beauty. ' 

One cannot fail to remark in this sonnet 
Shakespeare's anticipation of an essential 
principle of all true art, — disinterestedness, 
or that exemption from prepossession, self- 
admiration, and prejudice, which enables the 
artist to work in the full freedom of the ideal. 
As Mr. Hudson, has well said :^ " If a man goes 
to admiring his own skill, or airing his own 
powers, or heeding the breath of conventional 
applause ; if he yields to any strain of self- 
complacency, or turns to practising smiles, or 
to taking pleasure in his self-begotten graces 
and beauties, and fancies in this giddy and 

fine leather. According to Webster's Dictionary, the liquor in which 
hides are saturated is called the bate, and ' ' chopt " may refer to the 
cutting up of the raw material ; but that seems to me far-fetched. It 
is generally allowed by the critics that " beated" in the first line is a 
misprint for "bated" (French abattre), lowered, cut down, reduced, 
degraded. Compare Merchant of Venice (iii., 3., 32): "These 
griefs and losses have so bated me." 

' The final couplet is very obscure : 

" 'Tis thee (myself) that for myself I praise, 
Painting my age with beauty of thy days." 
Irving's Edition (vol. viii., p. 442) reads it "'Tis thee myself i. e., 
who art myself that for myself (i. e., as if myself) I praise," and 
the line " Painting my age with beauty of thy days" he compares 
to Love's Labor's Lost, (iv., 3, 244): "Beauty doth varnish age 
as if new born " all which furnishes very little help. 

^Shakespeare : His Life, Art, and Characters, vol. i., p. 147. 



1 88 A New Study of 

vestiginous state, he will be sure to fall into 
intellectual and artistic sin." 
Alas ! continues the poet : 

Son. 103. What poverty my Muse displays, when, 
with such a field for the exhibition of its powers, the 
subject in itself is more worthy of attention than after it 
has received my additional glosses. Oh, blame me not 
if I shall write no more ! Look into your consciousness, as 
a mirror,* and you will see a form that so transcends my 
clumsy inventions that my lines appear dull and dis- 
graceful to their author. Is it not sinful, then, that 
in striving to mend, I only mar a subject that is already 
well ? ^ Although my writing aims at no other end than 
to set forth thy graces and endowments, yet consider 
thyself and thou wilt see more, much more, than my 
verses can contain. 

In other words, the poet avers that his ideal 
of what he ought to write so far surpasses his 
power of execution that he is almost forced to 
drop his pen forever. 

Son. J/. Yet as a decrepit father takes delight in the 
youthful performances of a child, so I, as an author, dis- 
abled by the keen enmities of fortune,^ find comfort in Thy 

' The Quarto says, " Your own glass shows you,' using the phrase 
as an equivalent of self- reflection, or your inward mirror. 

'^ Lear (i., 4, 309) says, "Striving to better, oft we mar what 's 
well." 

^The Quarto reads, " So I, made lame by Fortune's dearest spite," 
which that rare critic, Mr. S. Butler, accepts as proof that Shakespeare 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 189 

excellence. Whether Beauty, Birth, Wealth, or Wit, or 
any of these qualities, or all, or more, bear sway in the 
world, with a proper title to the parts they play, I sim- 
ply engraft my affection upon Thy store, and then I am no 
longer either lame, poor, or despised. Thy mere shadow 
yields such an abundance that it suffices me, and I live 
even on a mere reflection of Thy glory. What I wish 
as the best,' I find in Thee, and it makes me ten times 
more happy than I can utter. 

Once more the young poet is restrained and 
confused by his modesty : 

Son. jg. But Low can I sing Thy praises with any 
modesty, when Thou art all the better part of me (or a 
sublimation of my own genius) ? As it is praising my- 
self when I praise Thee, what can my own praise of 
myself avail me ? For which reason let us live as if 
apart, our dear love no longer appearing as one, in order 
that by the separation I may give to Thee the due which 
thou deservest alone. Yet, Absence, what a torment 
Thou wouldst prove, were it not that sour leisure gives 
sweet leave to entertain the time with loving thoughts 
and so beguile both time and thoughts : or, were it not 
that Thou teachest me how to make one of two, by 
communing at once with what is both present and j^et 
afar ? 

(S ) Rivals in the Field. 

The young poet, after his meditations upon 
himself and his possible capacities, now turns 

was " literally lame " — "made lame by some accident, — possibly 
in a recent scuffle ! " O, Lord ! sir. 
' That is, the very highest ideal. 



iQo A New Study of 

to another subject, the obstacles he is likely to 
encounter in his literary career. 

Son. ^6. Why is my verse so destitute of modern 
vivacity and free from a quick versatility of change ? 
Why do I not, in the fashion of the day, glance aside to 
some newfangled methods, or to some unusual combina- 
tions of thought and expression ? Why do I always 
write the same thing in the same style, dressing my con- 
ceptions in such a guise that every word betrays its 
origin ? Oh, know, sweet Love, that I always write of 
You. You and your affections are my sole themes, so 
that the best that I can do is to clothe old words anew, 
and to use over again an energy that has been already 
used. Like the sun, which is daily new and old, my 
passion can only extol that which has been extolled 
before. 

Son. yS. I have so often invoked Thy inspiration as my 
Muse, and found such furtherance in its aid, that other 
and alien pens have learned my trick and put forth their 
poetry in Thy name. Thy favorable looks, which in my 
case have taught the dumb to sing, and heavy ignorance 
to fly on high, have added feathers to the wings of those 
who are distinguished for their learning, and imparted 
to the graces they already possessed a double attrac- 
tion. No less. Thou shouldst be more proud of that 
which I compose, because it is solely born of Thee, or 
due alone to Thy influence. In the works of others Thou 
dost but improve the style, and grace their graces by an 
additional grace, but in my writings, as fidelity to Thee is 
all the art I have, it lifts my rude ignorance to a level 
with their highest learning. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 191 

None the less, the poet Is obhged to confess 
to the Higher Muse that they must seemingly, 
at least, separate or be twain. His profession, 
that of actor, brings him into such disrepute 
with the public that he does not wish to de- 
grade true poetry by connecting his name with 
it, even by report. 

Soti. 36. Still, let me confess, that although our lives 
are in themselves one, we too must be divided, in order 
that the blots which are attached to me [because of his 
profession ?] may be borne by me alone, and without call- 
ing upon Thy assistance. In our affections there is but 
one end, in spite of the cruel fate which separates us 
from each other ; nor does that separation alter the 
nature of our lives, though it steals away the sweetest 
hours from our mutual delights, I may not, perhaps, be 
able to acknowledge Thee for evermore, lest my guilt 
which they bewail should bring Thee to shame, nor 
Thou henceforth do honor to me lest Thou shouldst 
dishonor Thyself. Yet do not do so, I pray, for Thou 
being mine, mine also is Thy good repute.^ 

" The sense of rivalry, awakened by con- 
tact with others, contributed," as Brandes has 
well said, " to the formation of Shakespeare's 
early manner, both in his narrative poems and 

^ I have in this sonnet, and a few others, capitalized Thee and 
Thou, and You and Your, when applied to the Higher Muse, in order 
to emphasize the distinction between the Higher and the Lower 
Muse, and accustom the reader's mind to the new meaning of the 
sonnets. But I have not thought it necessary to follow the practice 
where this object is not important. 



192 A New Study of 

in his plays, and hence arose that straining 
after subtleties, that addiction to quibbles, that 
wantonness of word-play, that bandying to- 
and-fro of shuttlecocks of speech. Hence, 
too, that state of overheated passion and over- 
stimulated fancy, in which image begets image 
with a headlong fecundity, like that of the low 
organisms which pullulate by mere scission." 
That is true, — but Brandes adds, with no less 
truth, " The man of all talents had the talent for 
word-plays and thought-quibbles among the 
rest ; he was too richly endowed to be behind- 
hand even here. But there was in all this 
something foreign to his true self. When he 
reaches the point at which his inmost person- 
ality begins to reveal itself in his writings, we 
are at once made conscious of a far deeper and 
more emotional nature than that which finds 
expression in the teeming conceits of the nar- 
rative poems and the incessant scintillations 
of the early comedies." ^ 

Son. yg. So long as I was alone in calling upon thy 
aid, my verse alone was distinguished by thy gentle pres- 
ence ; but now that other poets attempt the same thing, 
my numbers seem to have fallen off, and my discour- 
aged Muse is ready to yield place to that of another. I 
grant, my Love, that thy loveliness deserves the labor of 
a worthier pen than mine, and yet what thy poet invents 
' Brandes's Critical Study, (vol. i., p. 75). 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 193 

he but robs from thee, and then gives back again. He 
ascribes qualities to thee which he had simply stolen 
from thee ; he lends thee beauty, but that beauty he 
found already in thy cheek ; he can write no appreciation 
of thee which is not already contained in thy life. Give 
him, then, no particular credit for what he says, as he 
gets it all from the simple contemplation of thy nature. 
No, thank him not for what he utters, as all that he 
owes thee thou thyself dost pay. 

The poet asks no especial favors from the 
Higher Muse, but simply justice. 

Son. 82. I grant Thou wert not married to my 
Muse, or given to me as a sole and exclusive possession, 
and mayst therefore lend thine ear to the appropriate 
words which other writers use in unfolding their several 
themes, "blessing every book," for Thou art as just in 
thy estimates as thou art fair in thy form. Conscious of 
an excellence beyond my reach, Thou mayst be enforced 
to seek anew some fresher exponents of it in this bet- 
tered time. Well, do so, Love, but when they have de- 
vised the finest touches of an overstrained rhetoric, 
remember that what was really characteristic in Thee was 
truly discerned and verbally well expressed by Thy truth- 
telling friend,' while the gross painting, the coarse dec- 
orations to which they resort, would have been better 
used elsewhere, — where cheeks want blood, — and not 
applied to Thee, where it is misplaced and superfluous. 

His excuse for his seeming delinquency is 
still a self-justification. 

' The Quarto has : " Thou truly fair wert truly sympathized," i. e., 
most feelingly appreciated. 



194 A New Study of 

Son. 83. I never saw that You needed painting or 
the artificial decorations of mere fancy, instead of the 
more truthful tribute of imagination, and I there- 
fore never applied them in the setting forth Your 
beauty. I discovered, or thought I had discovered, that 
You surpassed any heights a poet might reach in the ac- 
knowledgment of his debt to you. I have consequently 
been silent in my report of what I felt in regard to your 
qualities in order that You yourself, once made visible, 
might show how far an ordinary quill must fall short in 
speaking of your worth in its reality ; this self-restraint 
you have imputed to me as an offence, although it should 
be regarded as a virtue. By being mute I do not impair 
the beauty which others, in their endeavor to exhibit, 
only hide. There is more life in one of Your looks than 
in all the praises that your poets can produce. 

It is better often to be silent than to say too 
much not to the point. 

Son. 84. Who of the poets say most, — they that are 
silent and think, or they that speak, and yet speak 
nothing to the purpose ? Who can say more than this, 
the richest praise, that You alone are You, that is, your- 
self supreme ? Within whose limited brain is stored 
that wealth which is able to exemplify where Your equal 
grows ? * That pen must be poverty-stricken, indeed, 
which cannot lend some glory to its subjects ; but he 

' The Quarto reads : " In whose confine immured is the store, Which 
should example where your equal grew," and critics generally give 
the lines the go-by. Irving's editor, however, finds in them some 
alliance with the sonnets pertaining to marriage (vol. viii., p. 444), 
which I do not see at all. Shakespeare several times uses ' ' exam- 
ple" as a verb, as in Love's Labor 'j Lost (iii., i, 85), "I will ex- 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 195 

that writes of You, who truly shows You as you are, at- 
tains the full dignity of verse. Let him but copy what 
is writ in You, without confusing that which in its nature 
is most clear, and the exact reproduction will give such 
fame to his talent that his style will be universally ad- 
mired. You would, however, add a curse to your beau- 
tiful blessing if you were fond of a praise which is in 
itself derogatory. 

Because he is disposed to be silent, the poem 
claims that he is none the less full of thought : 

Son. 8^. My speechless Muse maintains her modest 
silence, while the richest comments in your praise are 
inscribed in letters framed by a golden quill, and in 
precious phrases which all the Muses have refined. I 
merely think good thoughts while others write good 
words, and, like an unlettered clerk, I cry amen to every 
hymn accomplished talent may put forth in the finest 
manner of the adept. Hearing you praised at any time 
I reply, " That *s so, that 's true," but to the best of en- 
comiums I add something more in my next : My love 
to you runs so far ahead of all expression that words 
must needs come hindmost. Respect others, therefore, 
for their utterances, but me for my dumb thoughts, 
which are, after all, a mode of affectionate utterance. 

i 

Yet while the poet asserts his claims against 
the generality of poets, he discovers one to 
whom he is disposed to bow. 

ample it," that is, I will give an example of it. See also Timon 
(iv., 3, 440, "I '11 example you with thievery." The lines are 
interrogative, I think, and simply ask what poet can fully express 
the ideal. 



196 A New Study of 

( ^) A Better Spirit Discerned. 

Son. 80. In writing of you how discouraged I am to 
find a Better Spirit using your name, and spending all 
his force in your praise, so that I become tongue-tied ! 
But since your worth is as broad as the ocean, which 
bears up the humblest as well as the proudest sail, my 
audacious bark, though far inferior to his, dares to ap- 
pear upon the main ; your smallest aid will keep it 
afloat, at least, while he goes sweeping over your sound- 
less deeps. Or if the " rack " ' threatens us, I of worth- 
less build, he a tall structure and of goodly port, — and he 
thrives while I go down, the worst that can be said of 
the catastrophe is that my fidelity to you was the cause 
of my destruction.* 

Son. 86. Was it the majestic movement of his great 
verse, bound for the prize of all, your precious self,^ 
that buried my best thoughts in my brain, making their 

' The Quarto has here : "or, being wrack't," which most of the 
modern editors print " or being wrecked," but the phrase refers to 
the " ugly rack " (Son. 33, 1. 6), or, the " swift-moving clouds that 
bring the storm." (See Antojiy and Cleopatra, iv., 14. 2. See also 
Hamlet, i., 2, 470, and Tempest, iv., i, 156,) Both barks could not 
have been spoken of as "wrecked," when one of them is said to 
" thrive." 

*One cannot but remark again in this sonnet the unpretending 
modesty of the young poet, to which I have before referred, mingled 
with a deep consciousness of real power. 

^ The Quarto has in line 2 : " Bound for the prize of (all to 
precious you)," where the modern critics have dropped the paren- 
theses, and changed to into too. But may the line not have read 
originally, " Bound to the prize of all," that is, to the common 
prize of all writers, or to the highest prize of all, to precious 
you, or to your precious favor ? 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 197 

womb their tomb ' ; was it his peculiar spirit, stimulated 
to write by other spirits on a more than mortal theme, that 
paralyzed my powers ? No, neither he nor the nightly 
coadjutors, who lend him aid, astonished me ; nor can 
that affable and familiar ghost,'' who gulls him with 
spurious intelligence, boast of victory over me. I was 
not intimidated by any fear of them ^ : but when I saw 
your countenance shining in every line, my subjects 
dwindled and my lines grew weak. 

Of course we do not know who this " Better 
Spirit " was : many conjectures have been 
made in regard to him, but none of them are 
entirely satisfactory. Daniel has been sug- 
gested, but Daniel is more likely to have suc- 
ceeded than to have preceded Shakespeare. 
Others, again, have mentioned Greene, though 
Greene was an enemy of our bard, and pre- 
sumably detested by him, even if we should 
suppose him capable of writing anything of 
any sort to excite Shakespeare's despair. 
Then Lilly, the Euphuist, has been lugged in 

' Romeo and Juliet (ii., 3, 9), " The earth that 's Nature's mother 
is her tomb. 

* It has not before been noted, I think, that Thorpe, the first 
publisher of Shakespeare's Sonnets, in his introduction to Marlowe's 
translation of the first book of Lucan, speaks of Marlowe both as 
" a ghost " and " a familiar." It is possible that he got the words 
from this sonnet, and if he did, it sets at rest the question as to who 
this " better spirit " was. See Bullen's Marlowe (vol. iii., p. 253). 

^ The Quarto has "sick of fear," meaning, as in Troilus and 
Cresdda, "envious." 



198 A New Study of 

to fill the gap, whose eccentricities the younger 
poet ridiculed. The most fantastic of all con- 
jectures was one by G. A. Leigh, which con- 
cludes that Tasso, an Italian, writing in a 
foreign tongue to a foreign public, was the 
culprit.^ It was said that Tasso put forth a 
fulsome and hypocritical laudation of Queen 
Elizabeth, which roused the jealousy of the 
young Englishman, though he cared about as 
much for that lady as he cared for the Puritan 
preachers. " Does he not say in Sonnet 85," 
argues Mr. Leigh, ** ' Hearing your praise I say 
V is so, 't is true,' " meaning Tasso by Tisso, and 
Q. E. D. 

One of the most plausible of these con- 
jectures was by Professor Minto,^ who brings 
George Chapman forward as the probable 
rival. Chapman was learned, polished, and 
severe in his taste, and in his dramas, as in 
his translations of Homer, a master of the 
grand style, or, as Keats says, " both loud 
and deep." ^ Besides, in his Tears of Peace 
(Induction, p. 21), he claims to have been 
inspired by the old Greek, while In his dedi- 
cation to his Shadow of Night, he talks of a 

' Westminster Review^ i8g7. 

' Characteristics of English Poets, p. 222. 

^ See Keats's sonnet on Chapman's Homer. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 199 

" heavenly familiar," apparently recognized 
in Shakespeare's Sonnet, No. 86. But chron- 
ology, I think, knocks this supposition on the 
head. The Shadow of Night was not pub- 
lished till 1594 ; the first specimen of the Iliad 
not till 1596, and the Tears of Peace even as 
late as 1609, — all of them, as I make out the 
dates, considerable after the Sonnets were 
written. Or, ascribing the Sonnets to a later 
date, it would bring them, as I have already 
shown, to a time when the poet had reached 
a point beyond all rivalry. 

If we must have a name for this unknown, I 
am decidedly of the opinion that it should be 
spelled Kit Marlowe. Marlowe was at the 
height of his popularity just about the time 
the Stratford poet was well settled in London. 
His " Tamburlaine " (1589),^ and his " Faus- 
tus" (1589), by their abandonment of the 
old-fashioned " jigging vein of rhyming mother- 
wits," by their more audacious aims, their 
sonorousness and stately diction, and by their 
vigorous projections of character, to say noth- 
ing of an evident yearning for Ideal Beauty, 
had thoroughly changed the aspects of the 
drama. Shakespeare knew Marlowe, had co- 
operated with him in Henry VI., and perhaps 

'See Bullen's Marloiue, vol. i., p. 70. 



200 A New Study of 

in Edward II. and other pieces, and must have 
discerned in him at once those quaHties which 
led his friends at the time or in after years to 
speak of him as the '' Muses' darHng." His 
"silver tongue," his "golden lines," his "rare 
art and wit," and his possession of " those 
brave, translunary things that the first poets 
had," had caused some of his couplets to be 
sung by the boatmen of the Thames as they 
rowed along the wharves. One writer says : 
" Men would shun their sleep in still dark nights, 
to meditate upon his golden lines." Besides^ 
Shakespeare did for him what he has not done 
for any other contemporary, — that is, directed 
attention to his productions. Twice he quotes 
from him entire lines,^ once a whole stanza,^ 
and it is thought to be proved that he paro- 
died a long passage from Marlowe's Dido^ in 
Hamlet. 

What Shakespeare says in these sonnets of 
his occasional silences would seem to confirm 
the opinion of some critics, that Spenser, in his 
Teares of the Muses, wherein Thalia complains 
of the barbarism and ignorance that had in- 
vaded the stage and driven off the harmless 

' Sonnet 54, and As You Like It (iii., 5, 82.) 
'^ Merry Wives (iii., i, 14.) 

^ See Hamlet (ii., 2, 430-475,) with the discussion in Furness's 
Variorum, vol. i., p. 184. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 201 

sport which had formerly given dehght and 
laughter, referred to our rising young poet, 

" He, the man whom Nature's self had made ^ 
To mock herself and truth to imitate. 
With kindly counter, under mimic shade, 
Our pleasant Willie, ah, is dead of late.* 

But that same gentle spirit from whose pen 
Large streams of honie and sweet necktar flow 
Scorning the boldness of such base-born men. 
Which dare their follies forth so rashly throw, 
Doth rather choose to sit in idle Cell 
Than so himself to mockery to sell." 

This was published in 1591, and probably 
had been read in manuscript much before. 
Shakespeare was then already known as the 
author of Loves Labor 's Lost and Loves Labor 
Won, The Comedy of Errors, the Two Gentle- 
men of Verona, A Midstimmer Night's Dream, 
and as a co-laborer in the several parts of 
Henry VI., in all of which are touches of ten- 
derness and mirth that might easily have 
attracted the congenial admiration of the elder 
and more prominent poet. 

(4) The Estrangement of the Higher Mtise. 

Our young poet in his first encounter with 
rivals was more deeply impressed by their 
ability than there was really any occasion for : 

' Dead meaning inactive, as the next paragraph shows. 



202 A New Study of 

and he not only lost confidence In himself, 
but began to feel as if the genius which had 
given him so much hope in the beginning, was 
about to leave him altogether. In this de- 
spondency he wrote a number of remonstrances 
which expressed with only too much modesty 
his fears of a final estrangement, or of the 
withdrawal of those higher inspirations which 
had ever been his chief delight. He wrote : 

So7i. 88. If Thou shalt be disposed to hold me in 
light esteem,' and ever look upon such merit as I have 
with scorn, I shall not demur, but taking sides with 
Thee fight against myself, to prove that Thou art right 
although Thou hast not kept Thy early promises to me." 
I know my own weaknesses better than anyone else, and 
I could tell such a story of the hidden faults that taint 
my nature that Thou wouldst gain immensely by cutting 
loose from me, or escaping all responsibility for what I 
write. But then I should be a gainer too, because, bend- 
ing my intensest thoughts on Thee, the imperfections I 
find in myself advantage Thee in lifting Thee so much 
the higher by the comparison, and at the same time they 
doubly vantage me, by revealing my defects more clearly, 
while elevating Thee as an ideal. 

Supposing this sonnet to be addressed to 
an actual person, as the critics commonly do, 
the later lines of it become to me wholly 

' " Sets it light " : See Richard II. (i., 3, 293) 
2 Quarto says, " Thou art forsworn," which means, I think, that the 
Higher Muse appears to the poet as not having kept its promises. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 203 

unintelligible. The poet is made to say to his 
friend that in losing him (the poet), the friend 
would gain much glory, i. e., reputation, as if 
the association were a decidedly disgraceful 
one : but then it is immediately added that the 
poet himself would gain a double ** vantage " 
by the separation, because, bending all his 
loving thoughts on the friend, the injuries 
he does to himself are in some way an im- 
mense acquisition to both of them ; he does 
not say in what way, and the reader is left 
in the vague. In my version the meaning of 
the lines, though not obvious, is yet clear : 
the poet's love for the Ideal Muse is so strong 
that he is willing to take all faults found in 
him upon himself in order to show that the 
ideal is pure and right. He is the guilty one, 
not in the imaginative, but the executive 
sphere. His performances fall short of his 
conceptions, and in releasing the Higher Muse 
from all responsibility for them he acquits 
that Muse, preserves it in its exaltation, and 
yet benefits himself by getting nearer to a 
true conception of their relative positions. 

Son. 8g. Say that Thou dost desert me, not as a 
mere caprice, but for some fault, and I will be prompt 
in the admission of it : Speak of my general disability, 
and I will at once limp to show it, making no defence 



204 A New Study of 

against any reasonable accusations. Nor canst Thou 
bring me into greater disfavor, by holding up a model 
of the changes desirable in me, than my own perform- 
ances will. Therefore, knowing what Thou desirest of 
me, I will dissemble our acquaintance,' look strange, 
pretend to no intercourse, and never take Thy name 
upon my tongue lest I should profane it and perchance 
betray our former intimacy. For Thy sake I will under- 
take to denounce myself,* as I must never even seem to 
love him whom Thou dost hate. 

In Other words, he must take his faults upon 
his own shoulders, and not allow them to be 
imputed to the influence of the Muse he 
worships. 

But if I am to be deserted by Thee, the poet 
proceeds, let it be at once that I may know the 
outcome of what is to befall me. He writes : 

Son. go. Hate me if Thou wilt, but now, when the 
world is bent on crossing my desires, join in with the 
spite of fortune, and bow me to the ground, but do not 
drop down like an afterstroke ! Ah, when my heart 
hath just escaped one sorrow (this outward affliction of 
failure), do not follow in the rear of a woe just over- 
come like a rainy morning after a windy night, and pro- 
long my overthrow. If Thou must leave me, do not 
leave me last of all, when other smaller griefs have 

' The Quarto has," I will acquaintance strangle," meaning disavow. 
See Twelfth Night (v., i. 150), and A7tt. and Cleo. (ii., 6, 130). 

^ The Quarto has "Against myself I '11 vow debate" ; debate al- 
ways meaning, in Shakespeare quarrel or contest. See Alidsutnmer 
Nighfs Dream (ii., i, 116). "From our debate, from our dissen- 
sion." 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 205 

shown their spite, but come at the outset that I may 
taste the extreme of fortune's enmity and all other afflic- 
tions appear but as nothing in the comparison. 

How tremendous that loss would be the 
poet goes on to disclose by a series of striking 
contrasts. 

Son. 61. Some men glory in their birth, some in their 
skill, some in their wealth, some in their athletic force, and 
some in their newfangled gowns, or in their hawks, and 
hounds, and horses. Every such humor, too, has a distinct 
delight, in which each one finds a joy above all others. 
Yet none of their particular enjoyments fill my measure, 
for I transcend them all in one general best. Thy love, 
Thy favor, Thy inspiration is to me more than high birth, 
richer than wealth, and more agreeable than equipage 
and estate : and, having Thee, I may indulge in a pride 
which excels the pride of all other men. I am worried 
alone by one possibility, that Thou mayst take thyself 
away and leave me utterly wretched. 

Extremely exaggerated as all this would 
seem, if taken as addressed to an actual person, 
yet in a poetic sense it is natural and impres- 
sive and imparts great dignity to the whole 
subject. 

Son. Q2. But doing Thy worst to withdraw from me, 
there is one thing sure : As my life depends upon Thy 
love, it will continue only as long as that love continues. 
I have no need, therefore, to fear the worst of wrongs,' 

' The Quarto reads, " The least of wrongs," which is an obvious 
misprint, for the poet is dealing with what he considers the greatest 
evil that can befall him — the last to which' he has just referred. 



2o6 A New Study of 

when this last affliction would bring my life to an end. 
I see that my state is better than if it depended upon 
Thy caprices. No mere inconstancy of Thine can vex 
me, when my life would yield to the first evidence of Thy 
serious revolt. Oh, what a happy condition is mine, 
happy in the possession of Thy love, and happy to die if 
I have it not ! But what appearance is so blessedly fair 
that a blot on it is not to be feared ? Thou mayst be 
false, — that is, my ideal may be wrong, — and I the while 
be wholly unconscious of the error.' 

Let me illustrate the distinction here, simple 
as it is, by an example. When Shakespeare 
wrote the Two Gentlemen of Verona, a subject 
which was new and untouched as yet, he must 
have had a conception of it in his mind which 
was exceedingly pleasant to him. It gave him 
an opportunity to tell a deeply interesting 
story, to portray contrasts and originalities of 
character, to indulge in descriptions of man- 
ners and to introduce touches of pathos or 
humor which were a vast improvement upon 
everything that had been done before, and 
he wrote according to his highest conception 
of what was necessary in a domestic and 

' Here again the thought is very subtle, and I am not positive that 
I have rendered the explanation of it clear. The poet is medita- 
ting upon the ideal, which he says in itself or in the abstract seems 
perfect but which may be in each particular mind imperfect or false. 
It is like light, which is in itself pure, but may be deflected by the 
objects on which it falls, or take a color from the medium through 
which it passes. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 207 

social drama. In a word, he was deHghted 
with his ideal ; the occasional outbursts of 
lyrical passion or gayety, and the many lines 
of a sweet musical cadence show him full of 
interest in his work ; but it is clear that before 
he had got to the end, when he began to see 
some of its incongruities, how utterly improb- 
able much of it was, how far it fell short of 
what might have been, he felt the need, if he 
should ever go to work again, of a much higher 
aim and elaboration. The ideal which had 
smiled upon him at the outset was now turn- 
ing its back upon him with a frown. 

Mr. Ruskin remarks upon a similar change 
in a kindred art when he says that Raphael, in 
painting his earliest cartoons, painted them ac- 
cording to his ideals of the subjects ; if they 
were, in many respects, high ideals, it yielded 
him great pleasure to contemplate and to em- 
body them, as they have since given thousands 
of others great pleasure to see them ; but when 
we study them closely now and discover that 
they are not according to the highest ideals, 
we begin to suspect a general want of truth 
in their representations. We find many falla- 
cies of detail, and, in the end, though there 
may be grace of line, charm of color, rounded 
harmony, we carry away a strange feeling 



2o8 A New Study of 

that, after all, there is in them all a strong 
dash of the spurious. The ideal, though it 
lifted the artist, as it still lifts spectators, 
into a higher realm of thought and feeling, 
was none the less false. Now it was the dif- 
ference here indicated that Shakespeare dis- 
cerned and, in his youthful manner, tried to 
impress upon himself and his readers among 
his private friends. 

Our poet next dwells upon the consequences 
of this error. 

Son. gj. Supposing my ideal to be true, while it 
is in reality inadequate and so false, I shall be like a de- 
ceived husband, having Thy looks with me, though Thy 
heart is in another place. Yet there can be no expres- 
sion of hatred in Thine eye, and I could not by that 
means learn of any estrangement.* In the looks of 
many the history of the false heart is written in strange 
moods, frowns, and wrinkles, but heaven, by the man- 
ner of Thy creation, which is imaginative, has ordained 
that in Thy face love must ever be expressed. What- 
ever Thy thoughts and emotions may be. Thy looks 
must be genial and inviting, and wear a smile of sweet- 
ness. How like the apple of Eve Thy beauty would be- 
come if its real nature did not in the end conform to its 
appearance, /. ^., a source of widespread and unending 
evil. 

In view of his disappointments, the poet ex- 
claims, almost in the depths of despair : 

1 That is, an ideal always seems to be encouraging and genial. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 209 

Son. 33. Full many a glorious morning have I seen, 
flattering the mountain tops with sovereign eye, kissing 
the green meadows with its golden lips and gilding the 
pale streams with its heavenly alchemy ' ; anon, it permits 
the basest clouds to ride with ugly rack on its celestial 
face, and hide its visage from the forlorn world, as it steals 
ignobly to the west. Even so my sun one early morning 
shone, with all triumphant splendor : but, O, alack ! it 
was but one hour mine, and now the region cloud has 
masked it from my view." Yet it is not to be disdained 
for this, because if the great sun of the heavens may be 
obscured, the suns of the lesser world may also grow 
dim. 

The poet adds, a little petulantly, perhaps : 

Son. J4. But why didst Thou promise such a glorious 
day, luring me forth without a shelter, and then let the base 
clouds overtake me, while they hide Thy beauty in their 
rotten smoke ? 'T is not enough that through those 
clouds Thou breakest (giving me a brighter glimpse now 
and then) to dry the rain on my storm-beaten brow. 
No man will care for a salve which heals the wound but 
leaves its mark behind, nor can a change of aspect be a 
physic to my grief, and even if thou shouldst repent (or 
become favorable), I still bear the loss. An offender's 
sorrow lends but slight relief to one who bears the cross 
of dishonor. Ah ! no less Thy tears of repentence would 
be pearls rich enough to ransom all misdeeds. 

' In King yohn (iii., i, 77) it is said, 
" The glorious sun 
Stays in his course and plays the alchemist." 
(See also Sonnet 114.) 

^The region cloud, i, e., the cloud in the air. Hamlet (ii., 2, 
509). 



2IO The Sonnets of Shakespeare 

Is it pressing a point too far to suppose here 
that in the foregoing sonnets, which begin with 
such high aspirations, coupled to a conscious- 
ness of secret power, and end in deep discour- 
agement, we have a record of the poet's actual 
experiences ? We have seen before ^ how, in 
his first effort, Titus A^romcus, he threw him- 
self completely into the violent manner of the 
times, and by mere imitation of what had 
gone before him, out-heroded Herod. In the 
pieces that immediately followed. Loves La- 
bor 's Lost, the Two Gentlemen of Verona, the 
Comedy of Errors, and, perhaps, the first 
sketch of The Taming of A Shrew, he discarded 
his notable faults, and introduced a more gentle 
and delicate management of both characters 
and style; yet he could not wholly break 
away from his fondness for queer puns and 
conceits, frequent rhymes, doggerel verse, 
even sonnets in dialogue, pedantic classical 
allusions, and clowns, who spoke for the di- 
version of the groundlings and not for the 
furtherance of the play, — it was the fashion 
of the age. 

But may we not suppose, too, as he so 
often excuses himself on the ground of his 
low fortunes, that he was compelled to do 

' See ante, Group 3, p. 114. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 2 1 1 

work, merely to live, which did not carry with 
it his real approval. Painters at this day are 
sometimes required to put forth pictures which 
they call " pot-boilers," and which are anything 
but flattering representations of their powers. 
We know of Shakespeare that, before and after 
he was dead, plays were ascribed to him that 
were not at all worthy of his genius, and yet 
they may have been his.^ None of them can 
be regarded as the work of the author of Ham- 
let, Othello, and Lear, and yet some of them 
may have been the work of that author in his 
adolescence, and especially when he was in the 
hard grip of poverty. Acute modern critics 
do not scruple to point out passages in these, 
which, however tawdry the- setting, show the 
touches of a master, but of a master in his 
salad days. Of his participation in the Two 
Noble Kinsmen there is no longer a doubt : a 
phrase or a cadence here and there in Edward 
III. makes us think that he helped the author, 
whoever he was ; and an ink-blot, if no more, 
of him who complained that he had gone 
" here and there " in familiar intercourse with 
unknown minds, and trimmed his sails to ev- 
ery wind, is more than discernible in Arden 

' The names of these doubtful or suspicious plays are given in 
nearly all lives of the poet. 



212 A New Study of 

of Feversham and The Yorkshire Tragedy} 
But his fine poetic instincts turned him away 
gradually from these Stygian pools to heavenly 
air, where no foulness lived, and death itself 
was dead. 

( ^) A Resolve to A-mend. 

It was only natural for the young poet, 
seeing how he had wandered from what his 
genuine poetic instincts informed him was the 
right path, to endeavor to get back ; and he 
appealed to his Muse, his ordinary, every-day 
Muse we may say, to resume allegiance to the 
Higher Muse, which had been estranged. He 
calls : 

Son. ICO. Where art thou, Muse, that thou hast for- 
gotten to call upon that Higher Muse, who gives thee all 
thy force ? Dost thou waste thy enthusiasm on some 
worthless song," darkening thy pov/er in order to lend a 
paltry subject light ? Return, forgetful Muse, and re- 
deem the time so idly spent, by gentle numbers ! Sing 
again to the ear that will thy lays esteem, and lend thy pen 
both subject and style. Awake, torpid Muse,^ and look 
once more into the face of the true ideal ; and if thou 

' See Swinburne's remarks in A Study of Shakespeare, chap, iii., 
passim. 

* Thy fury, — poetic enthusiasm, as in Lovers Labor ''s Lost {i\., 
3, 229): "What fury hath inspired thee now ?" Othello also 
speaks of a " prophetic fury " (iii., 4, 72). 

* " Resty Muse," or, Muse too fond of rest. Dowden says, torpid. 
In 'LaXin, piger , ientus. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 213 

findest that, in the lapse of time, wrinkles have been en- 
graven there (or that it has suffered degradation), be a 
satirist' to that decay, and cause its spoils to be de- 
spised. Give the object of my love a fame that shall 
grow faster than Time's waste, and hinder the ravages of 
his malignant weapon. 

The distinction between the ordinary Muse 
and the Higher Muse, is made very prominent 
in the next sonnet. 

Son. loi. Oh, truant Muse, what amend canst thou 
make for thy neglect of " truth in beauty dyed " ? Both 
Truth and Beauty depend upon the favors of the Higher 
Muse, as thou thyself dost in order to obtain true dig- 
nity.° Wilt thou answer, perchance, O Muse, that 
Truth needs no color but its own, and Beauty no decora- 
tion to show its harmony with Truth ; and that the best 
is the best when unadulterated ? But because it (/. e., 
" Truth in Beauty dyed ") needs no praise, wilt thou be 
silent ? Offer no such excuse, as it is within thy power 
to render the Higher Muse immortal and win the applause 
of ages yet to be. Then do thy office. Muse, aye, teach 
me how to present him, in ages far hence, as he appears 
to me now.^ 

The poet's passion has revived ; but his 
power of execution still lags. 

'Quarto has, "be a satire," meaning satirist, as in Jonson's 
Poetaster (v. i.). 

2 In the Quarto the masculine term him is used of the Higher 
Muse, while in the edition of 1640 the term is feminine, her ; but as 
the poet, in Sonnet 20, speaks of the Higher Muse as the master- 
mistress of his devotion, either term may be proper. 



2 14 A New Study of 

Son. 102. My devotion is stronger than it was, al- 
though the outward expressions of it are still weak. The 
feeling is not less because it makes less show. That love 
is merchandized ' or cheapened whose richness the owner 
parades before the public. When our love was in its 
freshness I celebrated it in my verse, as the nightingale 
sings her song in the front of summer,^ but stops as the 
season advances : not that summer is any the less pleas- 
ant than it used to be when her mournful hymns " hushed 
the night," but because every bough is now burdened 
with wild music ; and pleasant things cease to be pleas- 
ant when they become common. Like the sweet bird, 
then, I sometimes hold my tongue that I may not weary 
You by its monotony. 

Confessions of faults, as confession is said 
to be good for the soul, our poet gives us in 
plenty ; he writes : 

So7i. no. Alas, 't is only too true I have wandered 
away from the right path and made myself a spectacle 
to the mob, mutilated my best thoughts and turned my 
new tastes into old offences (by degrading them to the 
hackneyed commonplaces of the boards) : I have looked 
askance and disdainfully at truth itself, as if it were 
something to be avoided, and yet, by all above, these 
blemishes have been of some profit, for even the worst 
of my essays have proved the best of friends to me. 
Now, all is over, save that which shall never end — my 
devotion to Thee — I shall never more attempt to sharpen 

' See Sonnets 24, 14 : and also Love's Labor V Lost 
''The Quarto has "in Summer's front": See Winter's Tale 
(iv. 3, 3), " peering in April's front." 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 215 

my appetite by new trials, which only serve to alienate 
an older companion. An exclusive god of my affection, 
henceforth give me welcome to Thy pure heart, as, next 
to Heaven itself, my best of homes. 

His faults, however, he repeats, are not en- 
tirely his own. 

Son. III. Still, if I have gone astray, it was not en- 
tirely my own fault, but chide an adverse fortune for the 
result, which did not provide for me a happier life than 
this dependence on public support, which generates 
public manners. Ascribe it to that guilty goddess, if 
my name has received a brand, and my very nature been 
subdued to what it works in, like the dyer's hand. Pity 
me, then, rather than upbraid me, and help me to a re- 
form. A willing patient, I will drink potions of vinegar 
to cure my strong infection : I will think no bitterness 
bitter, no double penalties imposed upon me too severe, 
if they will only correct what I already deem correction. 
Pity me, dear friend, and I assure You Your pity alone 
will work out my reformation. 

Son. 112. Yes, indeed, Your sympathy and commis- 
eration will fill up the gaps that vulgar scandal has en- 
graved upon my brow. If You will hide my bad and 
accept my good, what shall I care for the judgments of 
others, whether favorable or not ? You are my all-the- 
world now ; and my merits and demerits shall only be 
determined by Your decision. No one else for me, nor 
I for any one else, shall change my fixed sense of what 
is right or wrong (that is, poetically, not morally). I 
shall cast all care for the voices of others into so deep 
an abyss, that my ear, like that of an adder, shall be 



2i6 A New Study of 

stopped to all sounds alike, come they from carper or 
flatterer. Mark, too, how I dispense with their opinions.^ 
You are so firmly knit into my purposes, that everything 
else in the world seems dead. 

Son. io8. There is nothing in the brain — no conceit 
or aspiration, which it is possible to put down in writ- 
ing — in which I have not endeavored to figure some- 
thing of my true inward feeling toward Thee. What is 
there new to speak or to write which can be an adequate 
expression of my love or of Thy excellence ? Nothing, 
dear one, and therefore every day I say over again the 
same thing, as one repeats his prayers, counting nothing 
old as long as Thou art mine, and I am Thine. It is an in- 
spiration ever fresh, as fresh as it was in those early days 
when I first hallowed Thy love in my song. Love is eter- 
nal in its essence, and does not feel the injurious weight 
or dust of age, or acquire any wrinkles from the passage 
of Time. Antiquity, where the first conceit of it was 
born, will still prove to be its home, — though all the 
outward forms of it might seem to show that it was long 
since dead. 

Son. iij. You have a right to complain of my scant- 
ing my services to You, to whom I am dearly bound by 
every tie of duty ; of my intimacy with strange minds, 
to which I have surrendered what belonged of right to 
You : of my having hoisted sail to every wind that 
carried me farther from Your sight : book all my wilful- 
ness and error down : accumulate surmises that have any 
real ground, and then visit me with Your frowns : but 

' The Quarto says, " Mark how with my neglect I do dispense,'' 
which means, Mark how I can excuse this neglect of others ; and 
reference may be made to Lucrece, 1. 1070, or 1. 1279, ^^so to Com- 
edy of Errors (ii., I, 123) and Measure for Measure {lii., l, I35). 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 217 

withhold Your settled hate, because I may make this 
appeal, that I served to bring out the constancy and 
force of Your love. 

It is worthy of remark that In the sonnets 
(before given) in which Shakespeare deplores 
the lapses of the Episode, he speaks of them 
as moral offences or offences of the heart, 
*' What wretched errors hath my heart com- 
mitted ! " he has wandered from his home of 
love, — quit the source of all good, — and fallen 
into a degradation which can only be cured by 
copious tears of repentance. But he laments 
his later faults as of an intellectual kind, or as 
errors of the head ; he has looked on truth 
askance, he has associated with alien minds, 
trimmed his sail to every wind, resorted to ex- 
pedients that have branded his name, the re- 
sult often of his poverty ; and they deserve 
pity rather than blame. But he will submit to 
any discipline, whereby he may be corrected 
and restored. 

His lapses, the poet continues, were accom- 
plished in this way : 

Son. 118. As, in order to render our appetites more 
keen, we sting the palate with sharp compounds: or, as in 
purging, make ourselves sick to avoid sickness, even so, 
while I was full of your never-cloying sweetness, I 
adapted my taste to unusual sauces, and, weary of being 
well, found a sort of fitness in getting ill. This policy of 



2i8 A New Study of 

anticipation in art, or of exposing a healthful condition 
to medicinal treatment, turned the ills that might be into 
certain faults, but it has also taught me that drugs are a 
veritable poison to him who rejects your goodness.* 

The poet's resolution is now fixed against all 
changes. 

Son. loy. Neither my own fears, as to my powers or 
my fidelity, nor " the prophetic soul'' of the wide world," 
brooding over possibilities to come, shall control " the 
lease of my true love," or my hold of the Higher Muse, 
as if it had been foredoomed to a merely limited term.' 
The " mortal moon " ' — or the deadly half-light or 
reflected light — in which I have been groping, — has 
gone into eclipse, and the glum augurs who predicted my 
failure, now mock their own predictions. The uncer- 
tainties and doubts that hovered over my efforts are 
turned into assurances, and the peace of mind which I 
have at length attained proclaims a lease of endless 
continuance.* The drops of comfort, falling to me in 
this balmy air, have renewed my force, and Time itself 
submits to my mastery. For while he may be yet 

' The figure in this sonnet, though a striking one, is not very 
savory. 

2 " Oh, my prophetic Soul," Hamlet (i., 5, 40). 

^This is a peculiar use of the word "lease." The critics give it 
the go-by. 

'' " The mortal moon" here means the deadly, the fatal, the 
injurious, as the author elsewhere speaks of a mortal grief, a mortal 
wound, a mortal engine, a mortal sword, a mortal asp, a mortal 
field of battle, etc. 

* The Quarto reads " olives of endless age," an expression which, 
as olives were emblems of peace, may be the right one ; but I should 
prefer to consider the word as a misprint for "a lease" of endless 
date, referring back to the lease mentioned in line 4 as limited. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 219 

triumphing over dull and speechless trib.es, I shall live 
in my humble verse, and Thou, too, when tyrants' crests 
and tombs of brass are withered, shalt find it an ever- 
lasting monument. 

Many critics have tried to give this sonnet 
a historical bearing, which, in my opinion, is 
not justified, and strips it of the exceeding 
interest it has In its personal Interpretation. 
Among others, Mr. Massey Is quoted by Dow- 
den as saying that It is a song of triumph 
over the death of Queen Elizabeth, and the 
release of Southampton from the Tower ; 
George Brandes more recently takes the same 
view ; but it is going a great way afoot to find 
a meaning, when the simple obvious meaning 
is very touching and beautiful. The poet is 
writing of himself, of the growth of his poetic 
faculty, and not at all of external events. 

Son. I2J. Time, thou shalt not boast of effecting 
any change in me : thy monuments,' restored by modern 
energy, are nothing astonishing or strange to me, but 
merely repetitions of what has gone before. Because 
our days are brief we admire that which thou dost foist 
upon us as antique, but we rather bring it forth as 
adapted to our present desire " than as something never 
before known. Thy registers and thee I disregard, not 
wondering at the Present or the Past, because what 

' Pyramids : metaphor for what has been heaped or piled up. 
Dowden. 

' " Make them born to our desire." 



220 A New Study of 

thou hast left and what thou doest are made more or 
less false by the rapidity of thy movements/ This I 
vow, and will ever uphold, that in spite of thy scythe 
and thee, or in spite of what thou mayst promise or 
threaten, I will be true to myself — or to my convictions 
and ideals. 

This sonnet is very instructive, as it seems to 
disclose the sentiment of the author, himself a 
great reformer, as to what is due to works of 
the Past, particularly those of classical anti- 
quity, of which so much was made at his time. 
" They do not impose upon me," he said ; 
"they have been largely worked over by 
modern effort : and they are more or less false 
because of the rapidity of the changes in our 
conditions. At any rate I will not make them 
a model but be true to myself and to that lofty 
ideal which transcends all time." 

Son. 124. If my affection was a mere child of cir- 
cumstances it might be " unfathered," or taken away 
from me as a bastard of fortune, subjected to the fa- 
vors or the dislikes of the day, — a weed among weeds 
or a flower among flowers, as it may happen. But no; it 
was not built up as an accident, it does not suffer in the 
smiles of pompous pretension, nor does it fall under the 
blows of that forced discontent, to which the prevailing 
fashion invites our methods. It does not even fear that 
heretic policy, or the " prudence of self-interest," founded 

' Thy changes are so swift, that we have no time to fix our tastes. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 221 

on short-lived calculations : it is in itself so grandly poli- 
tic, that it cares neither for the heat that helps, nor 
the showers that destroy. In witness of the possibility 
of such a transformation, I refer to those exceptional 
souls,' who, having lived for crime, were yet able to die 
in the cause of goodness. 

Son. I2J. Of what avail has it been to me that in for- 
mer times I bore the canopy over the head of a momen- 
tary chief, honoring an external success with an external 
homage ? Of what avail was it that I tried to lay great 
" bases for eternity " on such slender foundations that 
they have turned into waste and ruin ? Had I not seen 
the worshippers of mere form and favor lose all, or 
more than all, by paying too much for what they got, or 
by foregoing simple tastes for compound sweets ? Poor 
strivers, they spent their strength in gazing about, not 
attaining any end. As for me, I shall be obsequious 
only in thy heart, O Muse, and please accept the obla- 
tion, which, though poor, is free and unmixed with any 
secondary feeling, — a mutual render or exchange be- 
tween myself and thee ! Away, too, you interested and 
forsworn defamers,^ and know henceforth that a true 

' In lines 13 and 14 of this sonnet, the Quarto reads : '* To this I 
witness call the soles of time, which die for goodness, who have lived 
for crime." In nearly all modern editions the word "soles" has 
been changed into " fools," but I do not see that this change clears 
the obscurity. The poet, in Sonnets 123-125, is speaking of the 
great change that has come over his conception as to poetic ideals 
and methods. In 123 he asserts that it is now so fixed as to be 
beyond the influences of time, in 124 he repeats that, as it was not a 
product of accident, it will not again submit to prevailing influ- 
ences ; and then in the next sonnet, 125, he reiterates that, whatever 
his errors may have been, he now entertains only a free, pure, un- 
adulterated devotion to his " love," the Higher Muse. 

''The phrase "thou suborn'd informer" has puzzled the critics 



2 22 A New Study of 

soul, when it is most impeached by your charges, is the 
least under your control. 

(6) The Ideal in its Fulness. .^^i- 

At length the poet is able to sum up the 
whole story, which he does in this grand way : 

Son. loj. Let not this strong affection be regarded 
as idolatry, or a blind and unreasoning fervor, nor the 
object of it pass as a simple idol, because my songs and 
praises alike are all " of one, to one, still such and ever 
so." My verse is constrained to this monotony, express- 
ing but one sentiment, and leaving out all differences, 
for the reason that the object of my love is good to-day 
and good to-morrow, or ever constant in its surpassing 
excellence. " Fair, kind, and true," or, varying the 
phrase, Beauty, Goodness, and Truth, are now my exclu- 
sive theme, on which I expend all my invention. Three 
themes in one, it affords a boundless scope for the exer- 
cise of the poetic faculty. Beauty, Goodness, and Truth 
each has had its worshippers and adepts (beauty in art, 
goodness in morals, and truth in science), but never un- 
til now have the three been held as one, or until Poetry 
embodies and celebrates the glorious trinity. 

Our young poet has reached his culmination. 

somewhat ; but it evidently means the same as in Venus and Adonis 
(655-7), where jealousy is called "this sour informer, this bate- 
breeding spy, this carry-tale." In Love's Labor 's Lost (v., 2, 
463), "carry-tale" is also connected with "mumble-news." Our 
poet is simply here giving his parting fling at those who had once 
decried his efforts. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 223 

Having passed through what, in the terms 
of the old guilds, was called " apprentice 
years," and having strayed far away in his 
"wander years," he has at length reached the 
"master years," in which he can do for him- 
self. He has now a full view of what is to be 
done, with a full consciousness of his own 
capacity to do it. He sees no longer in his 
personification of poetry simply "beauty," or 
simply " beauty dyed in truth," but a sublima- 
tion of all these qualities in a supreme unit of 
one in three and three in one.^ 

( J ) Conquest and Triumph. 

Then it was that the poet, addressing him- 
self alone, could exclaim, in a tone of more 
earnest exaltation than usually marked the 
conventional boasts of his contemporaries : 

Son. 55. Not marble, nor the gilded monuments of 
princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme ; and you shall 

' His wonderful instinct of genius anticipated here the theory 
which has become the most satisfactory and universal in modern 
aesthetics. Any one who has read the aesthetic letters of Schiller or 
the profound treatises of other followers of Kant can hardly fail, I 
think, to discover in these few lines of Shakespeare a clear insight 
into the great realm they have entered and so profoundly explored. 
Hamlet and Othello and Lear and Perdita and Imogen and Beatrice 
are not now afar. 



224 A New Study of 

shine in its contents brighter than on any unswept stone, 
besmeared by sluttish Time. When wasteful war shall 
have overturned the statues, and civil broils uprooted 
masonry, neither the sword of Mars, nor the flames of 
battle, shall burn away this living record of your mem- 
ory. You shall stand forth untouched by the obliviat- 
ing enmity of death ; and your merits shall attract the 
looks of all posterity, even to the end of all — yea, even 
until that final judgment, when you shall arise person- 
ally to meet its decisions, you will still live, an object of 
esteem to every lover of verse. 

A trumpet-blast of song ! Poetry shall out- 
last Time, and Genius be honored after the 
monuments of kings are buried — and a song, 
too, worthy of Shakespeare, who celebrates 
not himself so much as the art which accepts 
him as its highest impersonation. 

Mr. Carlyle has argued that genius is un- 
conscious of its power, but, in doing so, hits 
beyond his mark. Genius is always a mys- 
tery : it does not itself know the depth of its 
piercing insights, nor the sweep of its compre- 
hensive outlooks ; but it does know that its 
glances are keener and broader than those of 
others, and more likely to endure. Shake- 
speare did not distinctly perceive in himself, 
especially in his younger days, his potentialities, 
the profound philosophy, the vigorous thought, 
the exquisite beauty, which critics have since 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 225 

picked out of his teeming pages ; yet, more 
than any man of his time, he must have feh the 
push of a mighty unknown power, and, better 
than any man of his time, he expressed exuk- 
ingly what he could not exaggerate. 



PART second: 

THE ORIGINAL SONNETS AS NEWLY 
ARRANGED. 



227 



PART second: 

THE ORIGINAL SONNETS AS NEWLY 
ARRANGED. 

THE Sonnets that follow are copied from Mr. 
Samuel Butler's reprint of ^q facsimile edition 
by Mr. T. Tyler, after a comparison with that edition, 
specimens of which are to be found in the libraries of 
The Players and the Century Clubs, New York. 
The numbers to the right are those of the Quarto, — 
and the numbers in the centre are those of the new 
order. For convenience in reading, the long " s " has 
not been used in this reprint of the Sonnets. 

I. — THE CENTRAL AND EXPLANATORY SONNET. 

I. 77. 

THy glasse will shew thee how thy beauties were, 
Thy dyall how thy pretious mynuits waste, 
The vacant leaues thy mindes imprint will beare. 
And of this booke, this learning maist thou taste. 
The wrinckles which thy glasse will truly show, 
Of mouthed graues will giue thee memorie. 
Thou by thy dyals shady stealth maist know, 
Times theeuish progresse to eternitie. 
Locke what thy memorie cannot containe, 
Commit to these waste blacks, and thou shalt finde 
Those children nurst, deliuerd from thy braine, 
To take a new acquaintance of thy minde. 
These offices, so oft as thou wilt looke, 
Shall profit thee, and much inrich thy booke. 

229 



230 A New Study of 



II. — THE INDEPENDENTS OR SOLITARIES. 



145 



THose lips that Loues owne hand did make, 
Breath'd forth the sound that said I hate, 
To me that languisht for her sake : 
But when she saw my wofull state, 
Straight in her heart did mercie come. 
Chiding that tongue that euer sweet. 
Was vsde in giuing gentle dome : 
And tought it thus a new to greete : 
I hate she alterd with an end. 
That follow'd it as gentle day. 
Doth follow night who like a fiend 
From heauen to hell is flowne away 
I hate, from hate away she threw. 
And sau'd my life saying not you. 



3. 126. 

OThou my louely Boy who in thy power, 
Doest hould times fickle glasse, his sickle, hower : 
Who hast by wayning grown e, and therein shou'st. 
Thy louers withering, as thy sweet selfe grow'st. 
If Nature (soueraine misteres ouer wrack) 
As thou goest onwards still will plucke thee backe, 
She keepes thee to this purpose, that her skill. 
May time disgrace, and wretched mynuit kill. 
Yet feare her O thou minnion of her pleasure. 
She may detaine, but not still keepe her tresure ! 
Her Andite (though delayd) answer'd must be, 
And her Quietus is to render thee. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 231 



153- 



CVpid laid by his brand and fell a sleepe, 
A maide of Dyans this aduantage found, 
And his loue-kindling fire did quickly steepe 
In a could vallie-fountaine of that ground : 
Which borrowd from this holie fire of loue, 
A datelesse liuely heat still to indure, 
And grew a seething bath which yet men proue, 
Against Strang malladies a soueraigne cure : 
But at my mistres eie loues brand new fired, 
The boy for triall needes would touch my brest, 
I sick withall the helpe of bath desired, 
And thether hied a sad distempered guest. 
But found no cure, the bath for my helpe lies, 
Where Cupid got new fire ; my mistres eye. 



5- 154- 

THe little Loue-God lying once a sleepe, 
Laid by his side his heart inflaming brand. 
Whilst many Nymphes that vou'd chast life to keep. 
Came tripping by, but in her maiden hand. 
The fayrest votary tooke vp that fire, 
Which many Legions of true hearts had warm'd, 
And so the Generall of hot desire, 
Was sleeping by a Virgin hand disarm'd. 
This brand she quenched in a coole Well by, 
Which from loues fire tooke heat perpetuall, 
Growing a bath and healthfull remedy. 
For men diseasd, but I my Mistrisse thrall, 
Came there for cure and this by that I proue, 
Loues fire heates water, water cooles not loue. 



232 A New Study of 



6. 19. 

DEuouring time blunt thou the Lyons pawes, 
And make the earth deuoure her owne sweet brood, 
Plucke the keene teeth from the fierce Tygers yawes, 
And burne the long liu'd Phsenix in her blood, 
Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet'st, 
And do what ere thou wilt swift-footed time 
To the wide world and all her fading sweets : 
But I forbid thee one most hainous crime, 
O carue not with thy howers my loues faire brow, 
Nor draw noe lines there with thine antique pen, 
Him in thy course vntainted doe allow. 
For beauties patterne to succeding men. 

Yet doe thy worst ould Time dispight thy wrong. 
My loue shall in my verse euer line young. 



122. 



THy guift, thy tables, are within my braine 
Full characterd with lasting memory, 
Which shall aboue that idle rancke remaine 
Beyond all date euen to eternity. 
Or at the least, so long as braine and heart 
Haue facultie by nature to subsist, 
Til each to raz'd obliuion yeeld his part 
Of thee, thy record neuer can be mist : 
That poore retention could not so much hold, 
Nor need I tallies thy deare loue to skore, 
Therefore to giue them from me was I bold, 
To trust those tables that receaue thee more. 
To keepe an adiunckt to remember thee. 
Were to import forgetfulnesse in mee. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 233 



8. 81. 

OR I shall Hue your Epitaph to make, 
Or you suruiue when I in earth am rotten, 
From hence your memory death cannot take, 
Although in me each part will be forgotten. 
Your name from hence immortall life shall haue, 
Though I (once gone) to all the world must dye, 
The earth can yeeld me but a common graue. 
When you intombed in mens eyes shall lye, 
Your monument shall be my gentle verse, 
Which eyes not yet created shall ore-read. 
And toungs to be, your beeing shall rehearse, 
When all the breathers of this world are dead. 
You still shall Hue (such vertue hath my Pen). 
Where breath most breaths, euen in the mouths of men. 



9. 6s. 

A Gainst my loue shall be as I am now 
With times iniurious hand chrusht and ore-worne. 

When houres haue dreind his blood and fild his brow 

With lines and wrincles, when his youthfuU morne 

Hath trauaild on to Ages steepie night. 

And all those beauties whereof now he's King 

Are vanishing, or vanisht out of sight. 

Stealing away the treasure of his Spring. 

For such a time do I now fortifie 

Against confounding Ages cruell knife, 

That he shall neuer cut from memory 

My sweet loues beauty, though my louers life. 
His beautie shall in these blacke lines be seene, 
And they shall Hue, and he in them still greene. 



234 A New Study of 



TO. 26. 

LOrd of my loue, to whome in vassalage 
Thy merrit hath my dutie strongly knit ; 

To thee I send this written ambassage 

To witnesse duty, not to shew my wit. 

Duty so great, which wit so poore as mine 

May make seeme bare, in wanting words to shew it ; 

But that I hope some good conceipt of thine 

In thy soules thought (all naked) will bestow it ; 

Til whatsoeuer star that guides my mouing, 

Points on me gratiously with faire aspect, 

And puts apparrell on my tottered louing, 

To show me worthy of their sweet respect, 

Then may I dare to boast how I doe loue thee, 

Til then, not show my head where thou maist proue me. 



III. — A PLEA FOR CREATIVE OR POETIC ART. 

II. 12. 

WHen I doe count the clock that tels the time, 
And see the braue day sunck in hidious night, 
When 1 behold the violet past prime. 
And sable curls or siluer'd ore with white : 
When lofty trees I see barren of leaues. 
Which erst from heat did canopie the herd 
And Sommers greene all girded vp in sheaues 
Borne on the beare with white and bristly beard : 
Then of thy beauty do I question make 
That thou among the wastes of time must goe. 
Since sweets and beauties do them-selues forsake, 
And die as fast as they see others grow, 

And nothing gainst Times sieth can make defence 
Saue breed to braue him, when he takes thee hence. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 235 



FRom fairest creatures we desire increase, 
That thereby beauties Rose might neuer die, 
But as the riper should by time decease, 
His tender heire might beare his memory : 
But thou contracted to thine owne bright eyes, 
Feed'st thy light's flame with selfe substantial! fewell, 
Making a famine where aboundance lies. 
Thy selfe thy foe, to thy sweet selfe too cruell : 
Thou that art now, the worlds fresh ornament, 
And only herauld to the gaudy spring. 
Within thine owne bud buriest thy content, 
And tender chorle makst wast in niggarding : 
Pitty the world, or else this glutton be, 
To eate the worlds due, by the graue and thee. 



13- 

VNthrifty louelinesse why dost thou spend, 
Vpon thy selfe thy beauties legacy ? 
Natures bequest gives nothing but doth lend. 
And being franck she lends to those are free : 
Then beautious nigard why doost thou abuse, 
The bountious largesse giuen thee to giue ? 
Profitles vserer why dost thou vse 
So great a summe of summes yet can'st not Hue ? 
For hauing traffike with thy selfe alone. 
Thou of thy selfe thy sweet selfe dost deceaue, 
Then how when nature calls thee to be gone. 
What acceptable Audit can'st thou leaue ? 
Thy vnus'd beauty must be tomb'd with thee. 
Which vsed Hues th' executor to be. 



236 A New Study of 



14. • n 

FOr shame deny that thou bear st loue to any 
Who for thy selfe art so vnprouident 
Graunt if thou wilt, thou art belou'd of many, 
But that thou none lou'st is most euident : 
For thou art so possest with murdrous hate, 
That gainst thy selfe thou stickst not to conspire, 
Seeking that beautious roofe to ruinate 
Which to repnire should be thy chiefe desire : 
O change thy thought, that I may change my minde. 
Shall hate be fairer log'd then gentle loue ? 
Be as thy presence is gracious and kind, 
Or to thy selfe at least kind harted proue, 
Make thee an other selfe for loue of me, 
That beauty still may Hue in thine or thee. 



15. 

LOoke in thy glasse and tell the face thou vewest, 
Now is the time that face should forme an other. 
Whose fresh repaire if now thou not renewest. 
Thou doo'st beguile the world, vnblesse some mother. 
For where is she so faire whose vn-eard wombe 
Disdaines the tillage of thy husbandry ? 
Or who is he so fond will be the tombe. 
Of his selfe loue to stop posterity ? 
Thou art thy mothers glasse and she in thee 
Calls backe the louely Aprill of her prime. 
So thou through windowes of thine age shalt see, 
Dispight of wrinkles this thy goulden time. 
But if thou Hue remembred not to be. 
Die single and thine Image dies with thee. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 237 



16. 5. 

THose howers that with gentle worke did frame, 
The louely gaze where euery eye doth dwell 

Will play the tirants to the very same, 

And that vnfaire which fairely doth excell : 

For neuer resting time leads Summer on, 

To hidious winter and confounds him there, 

Sap checkt with frost and lustie leau's quite gon. 

Beauty ore-snow'd and barenes euery where. 

Then were not summers distillation left 

A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glasse. 

Beauties effect with beauty were bereft, 

Nor it nor noe remembrance what it was. 

But flowers distil'd though they with winter meete, 
Leese but their show, their substance still Hues sweet. 



17. 6 

THen let not winters wragged hand deface, 
In thee thy summer ere thou be distil'd : 

Make sweet some viall ; treasure thou some place, 

With beauties treasure ere it be selfe kil'd : 

That vsre is not forbidden vsery. 

Which happies those that pay the willing lone ; 

That's for thy selfe to breed an other thee, 

Or ten times happier be it ten for one. 

Ten times thy selfe were happier then thou art, 

If ten of thine ten times refigur'd thee, 

Then what could death doe if thou should'st depart. 

Leaning thee liuing in posterity ? 

Be not selfe-wild for thou art much too faire. 

To be deaths conquest and make wormes thine heire. 



238 A New Study of 



WHen fortie Winters shall beseige thy brow, 
And digge deep trenches in thy beauties field, 
Thy youthes proud liuery so gaz'd on now, 
Wil be a totter'd weed of smal worth held : 
Then being askt, where all thy beautie lies, 
Where all the treasure of thy lusty daies ; 
To say within thine owne deepe sunken eyes, 
Were an all-eating shame, and thriftlesse praise. 
How much more praise deseru'd thy beauties vse. 
If thou couldst answere this faire child of mine 
Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse 
Proouing his beautie by succession thine. 

This were to be new made when thou art ould. 
And see thy blood warme when thou feel'st it could. 



19, II. 

AS fast as thou shalt wane so fast thou grow'st 
In one of thine, from that which thou departest, 
And that fresh bloud which yongly thou bestow'st. 
Thou maist call thine, when thou from youth conuertest. 
Herein Hues wisdome, beauty, and increase, 
Without this follie, age, and could decay. 
If all were minded so, the times should cease. 
And threescoore yeare would make the world away : 
Let those whom nature hath not made for store. 
Harsh, featurelesse, and rude, barrenly perrish, 
Looke whom she best indow'd, she gaue the more ; 
Which bountious guift thou shouldst in bounty cherrish. 
She caru'd thee for her scale, and ment therby. 
Thou shouldst print more, not let that coppy die. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 239 



Is it for feare to wet a widdowes eye, 
That thou consum'st thy selfe in single life ? 
Ah ; if thou issulesse shalt hap to die, 
The world will waile thee like a makelesse wife, 
The world wilbe thy widdow and still weepe. 
That thou no forme of thee hast left behind, 
When euery priuat widdow well may keepe. 
By childrens eyes, her husbands shape in minde : 
Looke what an vnthrift in the world doth spend 
Shifts but his place, for still the world inioyes it 
But beauties waste, hath in the world an end, 
And kept vnvsde the vser so destroyes it ; 
No loue toward others in that bosome sits 
That on himselfe such murdrous shame commits. 



21. 13. 

OThat you were your selfe, but loue you are 
No longer yours, then you your selfe here Hue, 
Against this cumming end you should prepare. 
And your sweet semblance to some other giue. 
So should that beauty which you hold in lease 
Find no determination, then you were 
You selfe again after your selfes decease, 
When your sweet issue your sweet forme should beare. 
Who lets so faire a house fall to decay. 
Which husbandry in honour might vphold, 
Against the stormy gusts of winters day 
And barren rage of deaths eternall cold ? 

O none but vnthrifts, deare my loue you know. 
You had a Father, let your Son say so. 



240 A New Study of 



22. 

LOe in the Orient when the gracious light, 
Lifts vp his burning head, each vnder eye 
Doth homage to his new appearing sight, 
Seruing with lookes his sacred maiesty, 
And hauing climb'd the steepe vp heauenly hill. 
Resembling strong youth in his middle age, 
Yet mortall lookes adore his beauty still, 
Attending on his goulden pilgrimage : 
But when from high-most pich with wery car. 
Like feeble age he reeleth from the day. 
The eyes (fore dutious) now conuerted are 
From his low tract and looke an other way : 
So thou, thy selfe out-going in thy noon : 
Vnlok'd on diest vnlesse thou get a sonne. 



23- 

MVsick to heare, why hear'st thou musick sadly. 
Sweets with sweets warre not, ioy delights in ioy 
Why lou'st thou that which thou receaust not gladly, 
Or else receau'st with pleasure thine annoy ? 
If the true concord of well tuned sounds, 
By vnions married do offend thine eare. 
They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds 
In singlenesse the parts that thou should'st beare : 
Marke how one string sweet husband to an other. 
Strike each in each by mutuall ordering ; 
Resembling sier, and child, and happy mother, 
Who all in one, one pleasing note do sing : 

Whose speechlesse song being many, seeming one. 
Sings this to thee thou single wilt proue none. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 241 



24. 15. 

WHen I consider euery thing that growes 
Hold sin perfection but a little moment. 
That this huge stage presenteth nought but showes 
Whereon the Stars in secret influence comment, 
When I perceiue that men as plants increase, 
Cheared and checkt euen by the selfe-same skie : 
Vaunt in their youthfull sap, at height decrease, 
And were their braue state out of memory. 
Then the conceit of this inconstant stay, 
Sets you most rich in youth before my sight, 
Where wastfull time debateth with decay 
To change your day of youth to sullied night, 
And all in war with Time for loue of you 
As he takes from you, I ingraft you new. 



25. 16. 

BVt wherefore do not you a mightier waie 
Make warre vppon this bloudie tirant time ? 
And fortifie your selfe in your decay 
With meanes more blessed then my barren rime ? 
Now stand you on the top of happie houres. 
And many maiden gardens yet vnset. 
With vertuous wish would beare your lining flowers, 
Much liker then your painted counterfeit : 
So should the lines of life that life repaire 
Which this (Times pensel or my pupill pen) 
Neither in inward worth nor outward faire 
Can make you Hue your selfe in eies of men, 
To giue away your selfe, keeps your selfe still. 
And you must liue drawne by your owne sweet skill. 
16 



242 A New Study of 



26. 17. 

WHo will beleeue my verse in time to come 
If it were fild with your most high deserts ? 
Though yet heauen knowes it is but as a tombe 
Which hides your life, and shewes not halfe your parts : 
If I could write the beauty of your eyes, 
And in fresh numbers number all your graces, 
The age to come would say this Poet lies, 
Such heauenly touches nere toucht earthly faces. 
So should my papers (yellowed with their age) 
Be scorn'd, like old men of lesse truth then tongue, 
And your true rights be termd a Poets rage, 
And stretched miter of an Antique song. 

But were some childe of yours aliue that time. 
You should liue twise in it, and in my rime. 



' 27. 14 

Not from the stars do I my iudgement plucke. 
And yet me thinkes 1 haue Astronomy, 
But not to tell of good or euil lucke, 
Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons quallity, 
Nor can I fortune to breefe mynuits tell ; 
Pointing to each his thunder, raine and winde. 
Or say with Princes if it shal go wel 
By oft predict that I in heauen finde. 
But from thine eies my knowledge I deriue, 
And constant stars in them I read such art 
As truth and beautie shall together thriue 
If from thy selfe, to store thou wouldst conuert : 

Or else of thee this I prognosticate. 

Thy end is Truthes and Beauties doome and date. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 243 



IV. A YOUNG LOVE-TIME. 

28. 25. 

LEt those who are in fauor with their stars, 
Of publike honour and proud titles host, 
Whilst I whome fortune of such tryumph bars 
Vnlookt for ioy in that I honour most ; 
Great Princes fauorites their faire leaues spread 
But as the Marygold at the suns eye, 
And in them-selues their pride lies buried. 
For at a frowne they in their glory die. 
The painefull warrier famosed for worth, 
After a thousand victories once foild, 
Is from the booke of honour rased quite. 
And all the rest forgot for which he toild : 
Then happy I that loue and am beloued 
Where I may not remoue nor be remoued. 



29. 21. 

SO is it not with me as with that Muse, 
Stird by a painted beauty to his verse. 
Who heauen it selfe for ornament doth vse, 
And euery faire with his faire doth reherse. 
Making a coopelment of proud compare 
With Sunne and Moone, with earth and seas rich gems : 
With Aprills first borne flowers and all things rare, 
That heauens ayre in this huge rondure hems, 
O let me true in loue but truly write, 
And then beleeue me, my loue is as faire. 
As any mothers childe, though not so bright 
As those gould candells fixt in heauens ayer : 
Let them say more that like of heare-say well, 
I will not prayse that purpose not to sell. 



244 A New Study of 



30. 130. 

MY Mistres eyes are nothing like the Sunne, 
Currall is farre more red, then her lips red, 
If snow be white, why then her brests are dun : 
If haires be wiers, black wiers grow on her head ; 
I haue seene Roses damaskt, red and white, 
But no such Roses see I in her cheekes, 
And in some perfumes is there more delight, 
Then in the breath that from my Mistres reekes. 
I loue to hear her speake, yet well I know, 
That Musicke hath a farre more pleasing sound : 
I graunt I neuer saw a goddesse goe. 
My Mistres when shee walkes treads on the ground. 

And yet by heauen I thinke my loue as rare, 

As any she beli'd with false compare. 



31. 18. 

SHall I compare thee to a Summers day ? 
Thou art more louely and more temperate : 
Rough windes do shake the darling buds of Maie, 
And Sommers lease hath all too short a date : 
Sometime too hot the eye of heauen shines, 
And often is his gold complexion dimn'd, 
And euery faire from faire some-time declines. 
By chance, or natures changing course vntrim'd : 
But thy eternall Sommer shall not fade. 
Nor loose possession of that faire thou ow'st, 
Nor shall death brag thou wandr'st in his shade. 
When in eternall lines to time thou grow'st. 
So long as men can breath or eyes can see. 
So long Hues this, and this giues life to thee. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 245 



32. 104. 

To me faire friend you neuer can be old, 
For as you were when first your eye I eyde, 
Such seemes your beautie still : Three Winters colde, 
Haue from the forrests shooke three summers pride, 
Three beautious springs to yellow Autumne turn'd, 
In processe of the seasons haue I seene, 
Three Aprill perfumes in three hot lunes burn'd, 
Since first I saw you fresh which yet are greene. 
Ah yet doth beauty like a Dyall hand, 
Steale from his figure, and no pace perceiu'd, 
So your sweete hew, which me thinkes still doth stand 
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceaued. 
For feare of which, heare this thou age vnbred. 
Ere you were borne was beauties summer dead. 



33- 22. 

MY glasse shall not perswade me I am ould, 
So long as youth and thou are of one date. 
But when in thee times forrwes I behould, 
Then look I death my daies should expiate. 
For all that beauty that doth couer thee. 
Is but the seemely rayment of my heart, 
Which in thy brest doth liue, as thine in me, 
How can I then be elder then thou art ? 
O therefore loue be of thy selfe so wary, 
As I not for my selfe, but for thee will, 
Bearing thy heart which I will keepe so chary 
As tender nurse her babe from faring ill, , > 

Perfume not on thy heart when mine is slaine, [■^iC^A^^i^^ 
Thou gau'st me thine not to giue backe againe. 



246 A New Study of 



34- 32- 

IF thou suruiue my well contented daie, 
When that churle death my bones with dust shall couer 
And shalt by fortune once more re-suruay : 
These poore rude lines of thy deceased Louer : 
Compare them with the bett'ring of the time, 
And though they be out-stript by euery pen, 
Reserue them for my loue, not for their rime, 
Exceeded by the hight of happier men. 
Oh then voutsafe me but this louing thought, 
Had my friends Muse growne with this growing age, 
A dearer birth then this his love had brought 
To march in ranckes of better equipage : 
But since he died and Poets better proue. 
Theirs for their stile ile read, his for his loue. 



35- 50- 

HOw heauie doe I iourney on the way. 
When what I seeke (my wearie trauels end) 
Doth teach that ease and that repose to say 
Thus farre the miles are measurde from thy friend. 
The beast that beares me, tired with my woe, 
Plods duly on, to beare that waight in me, 
As if by some instinct the wretch did know 
His rider lou'd not speed being made from thee : 
The bloody spurre cannot prouoke him on. 
That some-times anger thrusts into his hide, 
Which heauily he answers with a grone. 
More sharpe to me then spurring to his side. 
For that same grone doth put this in my mind. 
My greefe lies onward and my ioy behind. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 247 



36. 5I' 

THus can my loue excuse the slow offence, 
Of my dull bearer, when from thee I speed, 
From where thou art, why shoulld I hast me thence, 
Till I returne of posting is noe need. 
O what excuse will my poore beast then find, 
When swift extremity can seeme but slow, 
Then should I spurre though mounted on the wind, 
In winged speed no motion shall I know, 
Then can no horse with my desire keepe pace. 
Therefore desire (of perfects loue being made) 
Shall naigh noe dull flesh in his fiery race. 
But loue, for loue, thus shall excuse my iade. 
Since from thee going, he went wilfull slow. 
Towards thee ile run, and giue him leaue to goe. 



37- 27. 

WEary with toyle, I hast me to my bed. 
The deare repose for lims with trauaill tired, 
But then begins a iourny in my head 
To worke my mind, when boddies work's expired. 
For then my thoughts (from far where I abide) 
Intend a zelous pilgrimage to thee : 
And keepe my drooping eye-lids open wide, 
Looking on darknes which the blind doe see. 
Saue that my soules imaginary sight 
Presents their shaddoe to my sightles view. 
Which like a iewell (hunge in gastly night) 
Makes blacke night beautious, and her old face new. 
Loe thus by day my lims, by night my mind. 
For thee, and for my selfe, noe quiet finde. 



248 A New Study of 



38. 28. 

HOw can I then returne in happy plight 
That am debard the benifit of rest ? 
When daies oppression is not eazd by night, 
But day by night and night by day oprest. 
And each (though enimes to ethers raigne) 
Doe in consent shake hands to torture me, 
The one by toyle, the other to complaine 
How far I toyle, still farther off from thee. 
I tell the Day to please him thou art bright. 
And do'st him grace when clouds doe blot the heauen : 
So flatter I the swart complexiond night, 
When sparkling stars twire not thou guil'st th' eauen, 
But day doth daily draw my sorrowes longer, [stronger 
And night doth nightly make greefes length seeme 



39- 44- 

IF the dull substance of my flesh were thought, 
Iniurious distance should not stop my way. 
For then dispight of space I would be brought. 
From limits farre remote, where thou doost stay, 
No matter then although my foote did stand 
Vpon the farthest earth remoou'd from thee. 
For nimble thought can iumpe both sea and land. 
As soone as thinke the place where he would be. 
But ah, thought kills me that I am not thought 
To leape large lengths of miles when thou art gone, 
But that so much of earth and water wrought, 
I must attend, times leasure with my mone. 
Receiuing naughts by elements so sloe. 
But heauie teares, badges of eithers woe. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 249 



40. 45- 

THe other two, slight ayre, and purging fire, 
Are both with thee, where euer I abide. 
The first my thought, the other my desire, 
These present absent with swift motion slide, 
For when these quicker Elements are gone 
In tender Embassie of loue to thee. 
My life being made of foure, with two alone, 
Sinkes downe to death, opprest with melancholia, 
Vntill Hues composition be recured, 
By those swift messengers return'd from thee, 
Who euen but now come back againe assured, 
Of their faire health, recounting it to me. 
This told, I ioy, but then no longer glad, 
I send them back againe and straight grow sad. 



41. 46- 

Mine eye and heart are at a mortall warre. 
How to deuide the conquest of thy sight. 
Mine eye, my heart their pictures sight would barre. 
My heart, mine eye the freedome of that right, 
My heart doth plead that thou in him doost lye, 
(A closet neuer pearst with christall eyes) 
But the defendant doth that plea deny. 
And sayes in him their faire appearance lyes, 
To side this title is impannelled 
A quest of thoughts, all tennants to the heart, 
And by their verdict is determined 
The cleere eyes moyitie, and he deare hearts part. 
As thus, mine eyes due is their outward part. 
And my hearts right, their inward loue of heart. 



250 A New Study of 



42. 47. 

BEtwixt mine eye and heart a league is tooke, 
And each doth good turnes now vnto the other, 
When that mine eye is famisht for a looke, 
Or heart in loue with sighes himselfe doth smother ; 
With my loues picture then my eye doth feast, 
And to the painted banquet bids my heart : 
An other time mine eye is my hearts guest. 
And in his thoughts of loue doth share a part. 
So either by thy picture or my loue. 
Thy seife away, are present still with me. 
For thou nor farther then my thoughts canst moue, 
And I am still with them, and they with thee. 
Or if they sleepe, thy picture in my sight 
Awakes my heart, to hearts and eyes delight. 



43- 52. 

SO am I as the rich whose blessed key. 
Can bring him to his sweet vp-locked treasure, 
The which he will not eu'ry hower suruay. 
For blunting the fine point of seldome pleasure. 
Therefore are feasts so sollemne and so rare, 
Since sildom comming in the long yeare set, 
Like stones of worth they thinly placed are, 
Or captaine lewells in the carconet. 
So is the time that keepes you as my chest, 
Or as the ward-robe which the robe doth hide, 
To make some speciall instant speciall blest, 
By new vnfoulding his imprison'd pride. 

Blessed are you whose worthinesse giues skope, 
Being had to tryumph, being lackt to hope. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 251 



44- 30- 

WHen to the Sessions of sweet silent thought, 
I sommon vp remembrance of things past, 
I sigh the lacke of many a thing I sought. 
And with old woes new waile my deare times waste : 
Then can I drowne an eye (vn-vs'd to flow) 
For precious friends hid in deaths dateles night, 
And weepe a fresh loues long since canceld woe, 
And mone th' expence of many a vannisht sight. 
Then can I greeue at greeuances fore-gon, 
And heauily from woe to woe tell ore 
The sad account of fore-bemoned mone, 
Which I new pay, as if not payd before. 

But if the while I thinke on thee (deare friend) 
All losses are restord, and sorrowes end. 



45- 31- 

THy bosome is indeared with all hearts, 
Which I by lacking haue supposed dead. 
And there raignes Loue and all Loues louing parts. 
And all those friends which I thought buried. 
How many a holy and obsequious teare 
Hath deare religious loue stolne from mine eye, 
As interest of the dead, which now appeare. 
But things remou'd that hidden in there lie. 
Thou art the graue where buried loue doth Hue, 
Hung with the tropheis of my louers gon. 
Who all their parts of me to thee did giue, 
That due of many, now is thine alone. 
Their images I lou'd, I view in thee, 
And thou (all they) hast all the all of me. 



252 A New Study of 



46. 4! 

HOw carefull was I when I tooke my way, 
Each trifle vnder truest barres to thrust, 
That to my vse it might vn-vsed stay 
From hands of falsehood, in sure wards of trust ? 
But thou, to whom my iewels trifles are, 
Most worthy comfort, now my greatest griefe. 
Thou best of deerest, and mine onely care, 
Art left the prey of euery vulgar theefe. 
Thee haue I not lockt vp in any chest, 
Saue where thou art not, though I feele thou art, 
Within the gentle closure of my brest. 
From whence at pleasure thou maist come and part, 
And euen thence thou wilt be stolne I feare. 
For truth prooues theeuish for a prize so deare. 



47. 116. 

LEt me not to the marriage of true mindes 
Admit impediments, loue is not loue 
Which alters when it alteration Andes, 
Or bends with the remouer to remoue. 
O no, it is an euer fixed marke 
That lookes on tempests and is neuer shaken ; 
It is the star to euery v/andring barke. 
Whose worths vnknowne, although his higth be taken. 
Lou's not Times foole, though rosie lips and cheeks 
Within his bending sickles compasse come, 
Loue alters not with his breefe houres and weekes, 
But beares it out euen to the edge of doome : 

If this be error and vpon me proued, 

I neuer writ, nor no man euer loued. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 253 



48. 115- 

THose lines that I before haue writ doe lie, 
Euen those that said I could not loue you deerer, 
Yet then my iudgement knew no reason why. 
My most full flame should afterwards burne cleerer, 
But reckening time, whose milliond accidents 
Creepe in twixt vowes, and change decrees of Kings, 
Tan sacred beautie, blunt the sharp'st intents, 
Diuert strong mindes to th' course of altring things : 
Alas why fearing of times tiranie, 
Might I not then say now I loue you best, 
When I was certaine ore in-certainty, 
Crowning the present, doubting of the rest : 
Loue is a Babe, then might I not say so 
To giue full growth to that which still doth grow. 



49- 137- 

THou blinde foole loue, what doost thou to mine eyes, 
That they behold and see not what they see : 
They know what beautie is, see where it lyes, 
Yet what the best is, take the worst to be : 
If eyes corrupt by ouer-partiall lookes, 
Be anchord in the baye where all men ride, 
Why of eyes falsehood hast thou forged hookes. 
Whereto the iudgement of my heart is tide ? 
Why should my heart thinke that a seuerall plot. 
Which my heart knowes the wide worlds common place ? 
Or mine eyes seeing this, say this is not 
To put faire truth vpon so foule a face, 

In things right true my heart and eyes haue erred, 
And to this false plague are they now transferred. 



254 A New Study of 



50- 54. 

OH how much more doth beautie beantious seeme, 
By that sweet ornament which truth doth giue, 
The Rose lookes faire, but fairer we it deeme 
For that sweet odor, which doth in it liue : 
The Canker bloomes haue full as deepe a die, 
As the perfumed tincture of the Roses, 
Hang on such thornes, and play as wantonly 
When sommers breath their masked buds discloses : 
But for their virtue only is their show, 
They liue vnwoo'd, and vnrespected fade. 
Die to themselues. Sweet Roses doe not so, 
Of their sweet deathes, are sweetest odors made : 
And so of you, beautious and louely youth, 
When that shall vade, by verse distils your truth. 



51. 69. 

THose parts of thee that the worlds eye doth view, 
Want nothing that the thought of hearts can mend : 
All toungs (the voice of fouies) giue thee that end, 
Vttring bare truth, euen so as foes Commend. 
Their outward thus with outward praise is crownd, 
But those same tongues that giue thee so thine owne. 
In other accents doe this praise confound 
By seeing farther then the eye hath showne. 
They looke into the beauty of thy mind. 
And that in guesse they measure by thy deeds, 
Then churls their thoughts (although their eies were 

kind) 
To thy faire flower ad the rancke smell of weeds, 
But why thy odor matcheth not thy show. 
The solye is this, that thou doest common grow. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 255 



52. 70. 

THat thou art blam'd shall not be thy defect, 
For slanders marke was euer yet the faire, 
The ornament of beauty is suspect, 
A Crow that flies in heauens sweetest ayre. 
So thou be good, slander doth but approue, 
Their worth the greater being woo'd of time, 
For Canker vice the sweetest buds doth loue, 
And thou present'st a pure vnstayined prime. 
Thou hast past by the ambush of young daies, 
Either not assayld, or victor beeing charg'd. 
Yet this thy praise cannot be foe thy praise. 
To tye vp enuy, euermore inlarged. 

If some suspect of ill maskt not thy show, 

Then thou alone kingdomes of hearts shouldst owe. 



53. 121. 

TIS better to be vile then vile esteemed, 
When not to be, receiues reproach of being. 

And the iust pleasure lost, which is so deemed, 

Not by our feeling, but by others seeing. 

For why should others false adulterat eyes 

Giue salutation to my sportiue blood ? 

Or on my frailties why are frailer spies ; 

Which in their wils count bad what I think good ? 

Noe, I am that I am, and they that leuell 

At my abuses, reckon vp their owne, 

I may be straight though they them-selues be beuel 

By their rancke thoughtes, my deeds must not be shown 
Vnlesse this generall euill they maintaine, 
All men are bad and in their badnesse raigne. 



256 A New Study of 



54. 94. 

THey that haue powre to hurt, and will doe none, 
That doe not do the thing, they most do showe. 
Who mouing others, are themselues as stone, 
Vnmooued, could, and to temptation slow : 
They rightly do inherrit heauens graces, 
And husband natures ritches from expence. 
They are the Lords and owners of their faces, 
Others, but stewards of their excellence : 
The sommers flowre is to the sommer sweet. 
Though to it selfe, it onely Hue and die, 
But if that flowre with base infection meete 
The basest weed out-braues his dignity : 

For sweetest things turne sowrest by their deedes, 
Lillies that fester, smell far worse than weeds. 



55- 66. 

TYr'd with all these for restfull death I cry, 
As to behold desert a begger borne 

And needie Nothing trimd in iollitie. 

And purest faith vnhappily forsworne. 

And gilded honor shamefully misplast, 

And maiden vertue rudely strumpeted, 

And right perfection wrongfully disgrac'd, 

And strength by limping sway disabled. 

And arte made tung-tide by authoritie, 

And Folly (Doctor-like) controuling skill, 

And simple-Truth miscalde Simplicitie, 

And captiue-good attending Captaine ill. 

Tyr'd with all these, from these would I be gone, 
Saue that to dye, I leaue my loue alone. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 257 



56. 67. 

AH wherefore with infection should he Hue, 
And with his presence grace impietie, 
That sinne by him aduantage should atchiue, 
And lace it selfe with his societie ? 
Why should false painting immitate his cheeke, 
And steale dead seeing of his liuing hew ? 
Why should poore beautie indirectly seeke 
Roses of shaddow, since his Rose is true ? 
Why should he Hue, now nature banckrout is, 
Beggerd of blood to blush through liuely vaines, 
For she hath no exchecker now but his, 
And proud of many, Hues vpon his gaines ? 
O him she stores, to show what welth she had 
In daies long since, before these last so bad. 



57. 68. 

THus is his cheeke the map of daies out-worne. 
When beauty liu'd and dy'ed as flowers do now, 

Before these bastard signes of faire were borne, 

Or durst inhabit on a liuing brow : 

Before the goulden tresses of the dead. 

The right of sepulchers, were shorne away, 

To Hue a spond life on second head, / 

Ere beauties dead fleece made another gay : '^ 

In him those holy antique howers are scene, / 

Without all ornament, it selfe and true. 

Making no summer of an others greene. 

Robbing no ould to dresse his beauty new, 
And him as for a map doth Nature store, 
To shew faulse Art what beauty was of yore. 



258 A New Study of 



58. 73. 

THat time of yeeare thou maist in me behold, 
When yellow leaues, or none, or few doe hange 
Vpon those boughes which shake against the could, 
Bare rnVd quiers, where late the sweet birds sang. 
In me thou seest the twi-light of such day, 
As after Sun-set fadeth in the West, 
Which by and by blacke night doth take away. 
Deaths second selfe that seals vp all in rest. 
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire, 
That on the ashes of his youth doth lye, 
As the death bed, whereon it must expire, 
Consum'd with that which it was nurrisht by. 

This thou perceu'st, which makes thy loue more strong, 
To loue that well, which thou must leaue ere long. 



59- 71. 

NOe Longer mourne for me when I am dead. 
Then you shall heare the surly sullen bell 
Giue warning to the world that I am fled 
From this vile world with vildest wormes to dwell : 
Nay if you read this line, remember not. 
The hand that writ it, for I loue you so. 
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot, 
If thinking on me then should make you woe. 
O if (I say) you looke vpon this verse. 
When I (perhaps) compounded am with clay. 
Do not so much as my poore name reherse ; 
But let your loue euen with my life decay. 

Least the wise world should looke into your mone, 
And mogke you with me after I am gon. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 259 



60. 72. 

O Least the world should taske you to recite, 
What merit liu'd in me that you should loue 
After my death (deare loue) for get me quite, 
For you in me can nothing worthy proue. 
Vnless you would deuise some vertuous lye, 
To doe more for me then mine owne desert, 
And hang more praise vpon deceased I, 
Then nigard truth would willingly impart : 
O least your true loue may seeme falce in this, 
That you for loue speake well of me vntrue, 
My name be buried where my body is. 
And Hue no more to shame nor me, nor you. 
For I am shamd by that which I bring forth, 
And so should you, to loue things nothing worth. 



61. 74. 

BVt be contented when that fell arest, 
With out all bayle shall carry me away, 
My life hath in this line some interest, 
Which for memoriall still with thee shall stay. 
When thou reuewest this, thou doest reueAV, 
The very part was consecrate to thee. 
The earth can haue but earth, which is his due, 
My spirit is thine the better part of me. 
So then thou hast but lost the dregs of life, 
The pray of wormes, my body being dead, 
The coward conquest of a wretches knife, 
To base of thee to be remembred, 

The worth of that, is that which it containes. 
And that is this, and this with thee remaines. 



26o A New Study of 



62. 97. 

HOw like a Winter hath my absence beene 
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting yeare ? 
What freezings haue I felt, what darke dales scene ? 
What old Decembers barenesse euery where ? 
And yet this time remou'd was sommers time, 
The teeming Autumne big with ritch increase, 
Bearing the wanton burthen of the prime. 
Like widdowed wombes after their Lords decease : 
Yet this aboundant issue seem'd to me. 
But hope of Orphans, and vn-fathered fruite, 
For Sommer and his pleasures waite on thee, 
And thou away, the very birds are mute. 
Or if they sing, tis with so dull a cheere. 
That leaues looke pale, dreading the Winters neere. 



63. 98. 

FRom you haue I beene absent in the spring, 
When proud pide Aprill (drest in all his trim) 
Hath put a spirit of youth in euery thing : 
That heauie Saturne laught and leapt with him. 
Yet nor the laies of birds, nor the sweet smell 
Of different flowers in odor and in hew. 
Could make me any summers story tell : 
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew 
Nor did I wonder at the Lillies white. 
Nor praise the deepe vermillion in the Rose, 
They weare but sweet, but figures of delight : 
Drawne after you, you patterne of all those. 
Yet seem'd it Winter still, and you away. 
As with your shaddow I with these did play. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 261 



64. 99. 

THe forward violet thus did I chide, 
Sweet theefe whence didst thou steale thy sweet that 
If not from my loues breath, the purple pride, (smels 
Which on thy soft cheeke for complexion dwells ? 
In my loues veines thou hast too grosely died ; 
The Lillie I condemned for thy hand, 
And buds of marierom had stolne thy haire, 
The Roses fearefuUy on thornes did stand. 
Our blushing shame, an other white dispaire ; 
A third nor red, nor white, had stolne of both, 
And to his robbry had annext thy breath. 
But for his theft in pride of all his growth 
A vengfull canker eate him vp to death. 
More flowers I noted, yet I none could see. 
But sweet, or culler it had stolne from thee. 



65. 29. 

WHen in disgrace with Fortune and mens eyes, 
I all alone beweepe my out-cast state. 
And trouble deafe heauen with my bootlesse cries, 
And looke vpon my self and curse my fate. 
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, 
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possest, 
Desiring this mans art, and that mans skope. 
With what I most inioy contented least, 
Yet in these thoughts my selfe almost despising, 
Haplye I thinke on thee, and then my state, 
(Like to the Larke at breake of daye arising) 
From sullen earth sings himns at Heauens gate. 
For thy sweet loue remembred such welth brings, 
That then I skorne to change my state with Kings. 



262 A New Study of 



V. — THE EPISODE OF THE DARK LADY. 

66, 23. 

AS an vnperfect actor on the stage, 
Who with his feare is put besides his part, 
Or some fierce thing repleat with too much rage, 
Whose strengths abondance weakens his owne heart ; 
So I for feare of trust, forget to say, 
The perfect ceremony of loues right. 
And in mine owne loues strength seeme to decay, 
Ore-charg'd with burthen of mine owne loues might : 
O let my books be then the eloquence, 
And domb presagers of my speaking brest. 
Who pleade for love, and looke for recompence. 
More then that tonge that more hath more exprest. 
O learne to read what silent loue hath writ, 
To heare wit eies belongs to loues fine wiht. 



67. 127. 

IN the ould age blacke was not counted faire. 
Or if it weare it bore not beauties name : 
But now is blacke beauties successive heire, 
And Beautie slanderd with a bastard shame, 
For since each hand hath put on Natures power, 
Fairing the foule with Arts faulse borrow'd face, 
Sweet beauty hath no name no holy boure. 
But is prophan'd, if not lines in disgrace. 
Therefore my Mistresse eyes are Rauen blacke, 
Her eyes so suted, and they mourners seeme, 
At such who not borne faire no beauty lack, 
Slandring Creation with a false esteeme, 

Yet so they mourne becomming of their woe. 
That euery toung saies beauty should looke so. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 263 



68. 131. 

THou art as tiranous, so as thou art, 
As those whose beauties proudly make them cruell ; 
For well thou know'st to my deare doting hart 
Thou art the fairest and most precious lewell. 
Yet in good faith some say that thee behold, 
Thy face hath not the power to make loue grone ; 
To say they erre, I dare not be so bold, 
Although I sweare it to my selfe alone. 
And to be sure that is not false I sweare 
A thousand grones but thinking on thy face, 
One on anothers necke do witnesse beare 
Thy blacke is fairest in my iudgements place. 
In nothing art thou blacke saue in thy deeds, 
And thence this slaunder as I thinke proceeds. 



69. 132. 

THine eies I loue, and, they as pittying me, 
Knowing thy heart torment me with disdaine, 
Haue put on black, and louing mourners bee. 
Looking with pretty ruth vpon my paine. 
And truly not the morning Sun of Heauen 
Better becomes the gray cheeks of th' Eaft, 
Nor that full Starre that vshers in the Eauen 
Doth halfe that glory to the sober West 
As those two morning eyes become thy face : 
O let it then as well beseeme thy heart 
To mourne for me since mourning doth thee grace. 
And sute thy pitty like in euery part. 

Then will I sweare beauty her selfe is blacke, 
And all they soule that thy complexion lacke. 



264 A New Study of 



70. 24. 

Mine eye hath play'd the painter and hath steeld, 
Thy beauties forme in table of my heart, 
My body is the frame wherein ti's held, 
And perspectiue it is best Painters art. 
For through the Painter must you see his skill, 
To finde where your true Image pictur'd lies, 
Which in my bosomes shop is hanging stil, 
That hath his windowes glazed with thine eyes : 
Now see what good-turnes eyes for eies haue done. 
Mine eyes haue drawne thy shape, and thine for me 
Are windowes to my brest, where-through the Sun 
Delights to peepe, to gaze therein on thee 
Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art 
They draw but what they see, know not the hart. 



71. 141. 

IN faith I doe not loue thee with mine eyes. 
For they in thee a thousand errors note. 
But 'tis my heart that loues what they dispise. 
Who in dispight of view is pleasd to dote. 
Nor are mine eares with thy toungs tune delighted, 
Nor tender feeling to base touches prone. 
Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be inuited 
To any sensuall feast with thee alone : 
But my fine wits, nor my fiue sences can 
Diswade one foolish heart from seruing thee, 
Who leaues vnswai'd the likenesse of a man. 
Thy proud hearts slaue and vassall wretch to be : 
Onely my plague thus farre I count my gaine, 
That she that makes me sinne, awards me paine. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 265 



72. 140. 

BE wise as thou art cruell, do not presse 
My toung tide patience with too much disdaine : 
Least sorrow lend me words and words expresse, 
The manner of my pittie wanting paine. 
If I might teach thee witte better it weare, 
Though not to loue, yet loue to tell me so, 
As testie sick-men when their deaths be neere, 
No newes but health from their Phisitions know. 
For if I should dispaire I should grow madde, 
And in my madnesse might speake ill of thee, 
Now this ill wresting world is growne so bad, 
Madde slanderers by madde eares beleeued be. 

That I may not be so, nor thou be lyde, (wide. 

Beare thine eyes straight, though thy proud heart goe 



73- '49- 

CAnst thou O cruell, say I loue thee not. 
When I against my selfe with thee pertake : 
Doe I not thinke on thee when I forgot 
Am of my selfe, all tirant for thy sake ? 
Who hateth thee that I doe call my friend, 
On whom froun'st thou that I doe faune vpon, 
Nay if thou lowrst on me doe I not spend 
Reuenge vpon my selfe with present mone ? 
What merrit do I in my selfe respect, 
That is so proude thy seruice to dispise, 
When all my best doth worship thy defect. 
Commanded by the motion of thine eyes. 
But loue hate on for now I know thy minde. 
Those that can see thou lou'st, and I am blind. 



266 A New Study of 



74. 138- 

lA/ Hen my loue sweares that she is made of truth, 
rr I do beleeue her though I know she lyes, 
That she might thinke me some vntuterd youth, 
Vnlearned in the worlds false subtilties. 
Thus vainely thinking that she thinkes me young, 
Although she knowes my dayes are past the best, 
Simply I credit her false speaking tongue, 
On both sides thus is simple truth supprest : 
Eut wherefore saves she not she is vniust ? 
And wherefore say not I that I am old ? 
O loues best habit is in seeming trust, 
And age in loue, loues not t'haue yeares told. 
Therefore I lye with her, and she with me, 
And in our faults by lyes we flattered be. 



75. 128. 

HOw oft when thou my musike musike playst, 
Vpon that blessed wood whose motion sounds 
With thy sweet fingers when thou gently swayst, 
The wiry concord that mine eare confounds, 
Do I enuie those lackes that nimble leape. 
To kisse the tender inward of thy hand, 
Whilst my poore lips which should that haruest reape, 
At the woods bouldnes by thee blushing stand. 
To be so tikled they would change their state, 
And situation with those dancing chips. 
Ore whome their fingers walke with gentle gate. 
Making dead wood more blest then lining lips, 
Since sausie lackes so happy are in this, 
Giue them their fingers, me thy lips to kisse. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 267 



76, 136. 

IF thy soule check thee that I come so neere, 
Sweare to thy blind soule that I was thy Will, 
And will thy soule knowes is admitted there, 
Thus farre for loue, my loue-sute sweet fullfill. 
Will, will fulfill the treasure of thy loue, 
I fill it full with wils, and my will one, 
In things of great receit with ease we prooue, 
Among a number one is reckon'd none. 
Then in the number let me passe vntold, 
Though in thy stores account I one must be, 
For nothing hold me so it please thee hold. 
That nothing me, a some-thing sweet to thee. 
Make but my name thy loue, and loue that still, 
And then thou louest me for my name is Will. 



77. 135- 

WHo euer hath her wish, thou hast thy Will, 
And Will too boote, and Will in ouer-plus, 
More then enough am I that vexe thee still, 
To thy sweet will making addition thus. 
Wilt thou whose will is large and spatious. 
Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine, 
Shall will in others seeme right gracious. 
And in my will no faire acceptance shine : 
The sea all water, yet receiues raine still. 
And in aboundance addeth to his store. 
So thou beeing rich in Will adde to thy Will, 
One will of mine to make thy large Will more. 
Let no vnkinde, no faire beseechers kill, 
Thinke all but one, and me in that one Will. 



268 A New Study of 



78. 142. 

LOue is my sinne, and thy deare vertue hate, 
Hate of my sinne, grounded on sinfull louing, 
O but with mine, compare thou thine owne state, 
And thou shalt finde it merrits not reproouing. 
Or if it do, not from those lips of thine, 
That haue prophan'd their scarlet ornaments. 
And seald false bonds of loue as oft as mine, 
Robd others beds reuenues of their rents. 
Be it lawfull I loue thee as thou lou'st those, 
Whome thine eyes wooe as mine importune thee, 
Roote pittie in thy heart that when it growes, 
Thy pitty may deserue to pittied bee. 

If thou doost seeke to haue what thou doost hide, 
By selfe example mai'st thou be denide. 



79- 139- 

OCall not me to iustifie the wrong. 
That thy vnkindnesse layes vpon my heart. 
Wound me not with thine eye but with thy toung, 
Vse power with power, and slay me not by Art, 
Tell me thou lou'st else-v/here ; but in my sight, 
Deare heart forbeare to glance thine eye aside. 
What needst thou wound with cunning when thy might 
Is more then my ore-prest defence can bide ? 
Let me excuse thee ah my loue well knowes. 
Her prettie lookes haue beene mine enemies. 
And therefore from my face she turnes my foes. 
That they else-where might dart their iniuries : 
Yet do not so, but since I am neexe slaine. 
Kill me out-right with lookes, and rid my paine. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 269 



80. 61. 

Is it thy wil ; thy Image should keepe open 
My heauy eielids to the weary night ? 
Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken, 
While shadowes like to thee do mocke my sight ? 
Is it thy spirit that thou send'st from thee 
So farre from home into my deeds to prye, 
To find out shames and idle houres in me, 
The skope and tenure of thy lelousie ? 
O no, thy loue though much, is not so great. 
It is my loue that keepes mine eie awake, 
Mine owne true loue that doth my rest defeat, 
To plaie the watch-man euer for thy sake. 

For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere, 
From me farre of, with others all to neere. 



81. 58. 

THat God forbid, that made me first your slaue, 
I should in thought controule your times of pleasure, 

Or at your hand th' account of houres to craue. 

Being your vassail bound to staie your leisure. 

Oh let me suffer (being at your beck) 

Th' imprison'd absence of your libertie. 

And patience tame, to sufferance bide each check, 

Without accusing you of iniury. 

Be where you list, your charter is so strong. 

That you your selfe may priuiledge your time 

To what you will, to you it doth belong, 

Your selfe to pardon of selfe-doing crime. 
I am to waite though waiting so be hell. 
Not blame your pleasure be it ill or well. 



270 A New Study of 



82. 143. 

LOe as a carefull huswife runnes to catch, 
One of her fethered creatures broake away, 
Sets downe her babe and makes all swift dispatch 
In pursuit of the thing she would haue stay : 
Whilst her neglected child holds her in chace. 
Cries to catch her whose busie care is bent, 
To follow that which flies before her face : 
Not prizing her poore infants discontent. 
So runst thou after that which flies from thee, 
Whilst I thy babe chace thee a farre behind. 
But if thou catch thy hope turne back to me : 
And play the mothers part kisse me, be kind. 
So will I pray that thou maist haue thy Will, 
If thou turne back and my loude crying still. 



83. 57. 

BEing your slaue what should I doe but tend, 
Vpon the houres, and times of your desire ? 
I have no precious time at al to spend ; 
Nor seruices to doe til you require. 
Nor dare I chide the world without end houre. 
Whilst I (my soueraine) watch the clock for you. 
Nor thinke the bitternesse of absence sowre. 
When you haue bid your seruant once adieue. 
Nor dare I question with my iealious thought. 
Where you may be, or your affaires suppose. 
But like a sad slaue stay and thinke of nought 
Saue where you are, how happy you make those. 
So true a foole is loue, that in your Will, 
(Though you doe any thing) he thinkes no ill. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 271 



84. 134. 

So now I haue confest that he is thine, 
And I my selfe am morgag'd to thy will, 
My selfe He forfeit, so that other mine, 
Thou wilt restore to be my comfort still : 
But thou wilt not, nor he will not be free. 
For thou art couetous, and he is kinde, 
He learnd but suretie-like to write for me, 
Vnder that bond that him as fast doth binde. 
The statute of thy beauty thou wilt take, 
Thou vsurer that put'st forth all to vse, 
And sue a friend, came debter for my sake, 
So him I loose through my vnkinde abuse. 
Him haue I lost, thou hast both him and me, 
He paies the whole, and yet am I not free. 



85. ^33- 

BEshrew that heart that makes my heart to groane 
For that deepe wound it giues my friend and me ; 
I'st not ynough to torture me alone. 
But slaue to slauery my sweet'st friend must be. 
Me from my selfe thy cruell eye hath taken, 
And my next selfe thou harder hast ingrossed. 
Of him, my selfe, and thee I am forsaken, 
A torment thrice three-fold thus to be crossed : 
Prison my heart in thy Steele bosomes warde. 
But then my friends heart let my poore heart bale, 
Who ere keepes me, let my heart be his garde. 
Thou canst not then vse rigor in my laile. 
And yet thou wilt, for I being pent in thee, 
Perforce am thine and all that is in me. 



2 72 A New Study of 



86. 41. 

THose pretty wrongs that liberty commits, 
When I am some-time absent from thy heart, 
Thy beautie, and thy yeares full well befits, 
For still temptation followes where thou art. 
Gentle thou art, and therefore to be wonne, 
Beautious thou art, therefore to be assailed. 
And when a woman woes, what womans sonne. 
Will sourely leaue her till he haue preuailed. 
Aye me, but yet thou mighst my seate forbeare, 
And chide thy beauty, and thy straying youth. 
Who lead thee in their ryot euen there 
Where thou art forst to breake a two fold truth : 
Hers by thy beauty tempting her to thee, 
Thine by thy beautie beeing false to me. 



87. 40- 

TAke all my loues, my loue, yea take them all, 
What hast thou then more then thou hadst before ? 
No loue, my loue, that thou maist true loue call. 
All mine was thine, before thou hadst this more : 
Then if for my loue, thou my loue receiuest, 
I cannot blame thee, for my loue thou vsest, 
But yet be blam'd, if thou this selfe deceauest 
By wilfull taste of what thy selfe refusest. 
I doe forgiue thy robb'rie gentle theefe 
Although thou steale thee all my pouerty : 
And yet loue knowes it is a greater griefe 
To beare loues wrong, then hates knowne iniury, 
Lasciuious grace in whom all il wel showes, 
Kill me with spights yet we must not be foes. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 273 



88. 



42. 



THat thou hast her it is not all my griefe, 
And yet it may be said I lou'd her deerely, 
That she hath thee is of my wayling cheefe, 
A losse in loue that touches me more neerely. 
Louing offendors thus I will excuse yee, 
Thou doost loue her, because thou knowst I loue her, 
And for my sake euen so doth she abuse me, 
Suffring my friend for my sake to approoue her, 
If I loose thee, my losse is my loues gaine, 
And loosing her, my friend hath found that losse. 
Both finde each other, and I loose both twaine, 
And both for my sake lay on me this crosse, 
But here's the ioy, my friend and I are one, 
Sweete flattery, then she loues but me alone. 



89- 35- 

NO more bee greeu'd at that which thou hast done, 
Roses haue thornes, and siluer fountaines mud, 
Cloudes and eclipses staine both Moone and Sunne, 
And loathsome canker Hues in sweetest bud. 
All men make faults, and euen I in this, 
Authorizing thy trespas with compare, 
My selfe corrupting saluing thy amisse, 
Excusing their sins more then their sins are ; 
For to thy sensuall fault I bring in sence. 
Thy aduerse party is thy Aduocate, 
And gainst my selfe a lawfuU plea commence, 
Such ciuill war is in my loue and hate, 
That I an accessary needs must be, 
To that sweet theefe which sourely robs from me. 

iS 



2 74 A New Study of 



90. 151. 

LOue is too young to know what conscience is, 
Yet who knowes not conscience is borne of loue, 
Then gentle cheater vrge not my amisse, 
Least guilty of my faults thy sweet selfe proue. 
For thou betraying me, I doe betray 
My nobler part to my grose bodies treason. 
My soule doth tell my body that he may, 
Triumph in loue, flesh stales no farther reason, 
But rysing at thy name doth point out thee, 
As his triumphant prize, proud of this pride. 
He is contented thy poore drudge to be 
To stand in thy affaires, fall by thy side. 
No want of conscience hold it that I call. 
Her loue, for whose deare loue I rise and fall. 



91. 150. 

OH from what powre hast thou this powrefull might, 
With insufficiency my heart to sway, 
To make me giue the lie to my true sight. 
And swere that brightnesse doth not grace the day ? 
Whence hast thou this becomming of things il. 
That in the very refuse of thy deeds, 
There is such strength and warrantise of skill, 
That in my minde thy worst all best exceeds ? 
Who taught thee how to make me loue thee more. 
The more I heare and see iust cause of hate. 
Oh though I loue what others doe abhor. 
With others thou shouldst not abhor my state. 

If thy vnworthinesse raisd loue in me, 

More worthy I to be belou'd of thee. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 275 



92. 147- 

MY loue is as a feauer longing still, 
For that which longer nurseth the disease, 
Feeding on that which doth preserue the ill, 
ThVncertaine sicklie appetite to please : 
My reason the Phisition to my loue, 
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept 
Hath left me, and I desperate now approoue, 
Desire is death, which Phisick did except. 
Past cure I am, now Reason is past care. 
And frantick madde with euer-more vnrest. 
My thoughts and my discourse as mad mens are, 
At randon from the truth vainely exprest. 

For I haue sworne thee faire, and thought thee bright, 
Who art as black as hell, as darke as night. 



93. 148. 

OMe ! what eyes hath loue put in my head. 
Which haue no correspondence with true sight. 
Or if they haue, where is my iudgment fled, 
That censures falsely what they see aright ? 
If that be faire whereon my false eyes dote. 
What meanes the world to say it is not so ? 
If it be not, then loue doth well denote, 
Loues eye is not so true as all mens : no. 
How can it ? O how can loues eye be true. 
That is so vext with watching and with teares ? 
No maruaile then though I mistake my view, 
The sunne it selfe sees not, till heauen cleeres. 

O cunning loue, with teares thou keepst me blinde. 
Least eyes well seeing thy foule faults should finde. 



276 A New Study of 



94. 144. 

TWo loues I haue of comfort and dispaire, 
Which like two spirits do sugiest me still, 
The better angell is a man right faire : 
The worser spirit a woman collour'd il. 
To win me soone to hell my femall euill, 
Tempteth my better angel from my sight, 
And would corrupt my saint to be a diuel : 
Wooing his purity with her fowle pride. 
And whether that my angel be turn'd finde, 
Suspect I may yet not directly tell, 
But being both from me both to each friend, 
I gesse one angel in an others hel. 

Yet this shal I nere know but Hue in doubt, 
Till my bad angel fire my good one out. 



95. 146. 

POore soule the center of my sinfull earth. 
My sinfull earth these rebbell powres that thee array, 
Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth 
Painting thy outward walls so costlie gay ? 
Why so large cost hauing so short a lease, 
Dost thou vpon thy fading mansion spend ? 
Shall wormes inheritors of this excesse 
Eate vp thy charge ? is this thy bodies end ? 
Then soule Hue thou vpon thy seruants losse. 
And let that pine to aggrauat thy store ; 
Buy tearmes diuine in selling houres of drosse : 
Within be fed, without be rich no more, 

So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men. 
And death once dead, ther's no more dying then. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 277 



96. 95- 

HOw sweet and louely dost thou make the shame, 
Which like a canker in the fragrant Rose, 
Doth spot the beautie of thy budding name ? 
Oh in what sweets doest thou thy sinnes inclose ! 
That tongue that tells the story of thy daies, 
(Making lasciuious comments on thy sport) 
Cannot dispraise, but in a kinde of praise, 
Naming thy name, blesses an ill report. 
Oh what a mansion haue those vices got, 
Which for their habitation chose out thee, 
Where beauties vaile doth couer euery blot. 
And all things turnes to faire, that eies can see ! 
Take heed (deare heart) of this large priuiledge. 
The hardest knife ill vs'd doth loose his edge. 



97. 96- 

SOme say thy fault is youth, some wantonesse, 
Some say thy grace is youth and gentle sport, 
Both grace and faults are lou'd of more and lesse : 
Thou makst faults graces, that to thee resort : 
As on the finger of a throned Queene, 
The basest lewell will be well esteem'd : 
So are those errors that in thee are scene. 
To truths translated, and for true things deem'd. 
How many Lambs might the sterne Wolfe betray, 
If like a Lambe he could his lookes translate. 
How many gazers mighst thou lead away. 
If thou wouldst vse the strength of all thy state ? 
But doe not so, I loue thee in such sort. 
As thou being mine, mine is thy good report.' 



278 A New Study of 



98. 120. 

THat you were once vnkind be-friends mee now, 
And for that sorrow, which I then didde feele, 
Needes must I vnder my transgression bow, 
Vnlesse my Nerues were brasse or hammered Steele. 
For if you were by my vnkindnesse shaken 
As I by yours, y'haue past a hell of Time, 
And I a tyrant haue no leasure taken 
To waigh how once I suffered in your crime, 
O that our night of wo might haue remembred 
My deepest sence, how hard true sorrow hits, 
And soone to you, as you to me then tendred 
The humble salue, which wounded bosomes fits ! 
But that your trespasse now becomes a fee. 
Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransome mee. 



99- 152- 

IN louing thee thou know'st I am forsworne, 
But thou art twice forsworne to me loue swearing, 
In act thy bed-vow broake and new faith torne, 
In vowing new hate after new loue bearing : 
But why of tAvo othes breach doe I accuse thee. 
When I breake twenty : I am periur'd most, 
For all my vowes are othes but to misuse thee : 
And all my honest faith in thee is lost. 
For I haue sworne deepe othes of thy deepe kindnesse : 
Othes of thy loue, thy truth, thy constancie. 
And to inlighten thee gaue eyes to blindnesse, 
Or made them swere against the thing they see. 
For I haue sworne thee faire : more periurde eye. 
To swere against the truth so foule a lie. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 279 



100. 87. 

FArewell thou art too deare for my possessing, 
And like enough thou knowst thy estimate, 
The Charter of thy worth giues thee releasing : 
My bonds in thee are all determinate. 
For how do I hold thee but by thy granting, 
And for that ritches where is my deseruing? 
The cause of this faire guift in me is wanting, 
And so my pattent back againe is sweruing. 
Thy selfe thou gau'st, thy owne worth then not knowing, 
Or mee to whom thou gau'st it, else mistaking. 
So thy great guift vpon misprision growing, 
Comes home againe, on better iudgement making. 
Thus haue I had thee as a dreame doth flatter. 
In sleepe a King, but waking no such matter. 



loi. 109. 

ONeuer say that I was false of heart, 
Though absence seem'd my flame to quallifie. 
As easie might I from my selfe depart. 
As from my soule which in thy brest doth lye : 
That is my home of loue, if I haue rang'd, 
Like him that trauels I returne againe, 
lust to the time, not with the time exchang'd, 
So that my selfe bring water for my staine, 
Neuer beleeue though in my nature raign'd. 
All frailties that besiege all kindes of blood. 
That it could so preposterouslie be stain'd. 
To leaue for nothing all thy summe of good ; 
For nothing this wide Vniuerse I call, 
Saue thou my Rose, in it thou art my all. 



28o A New Study of 



I02. 119. 

WHat potions haue I drunke of Syren teares 
Distil'd from Lymbecks foule as hell within, 
Applying feares to hopes, and hopes to feares, 
Still loosing when I saw my selfe to win ? 
What wretched errors hath my heart committed, 
Whilst it hath thought it selfe so blessed neuer ? 
How haue mine eies out of their Spheares bene fitted 
In the distraction of this madding feuer ? 
O benefit of ill, now I find true 
That better is, by euil still made better. 
And ruin'd loue when it is built anew 
Growes fairer then at first, more strong, far greater. 
So I returne rebukt to my content. 
And gaine by ills thrise more then I haue spent. 



103. 129. 

TH' expence of Spirit in a waste of shame 
Is lust in action, and till action, lust 
/" Is periurd, murdrous, blouddy full of blame, 
,---Sauage, extreame, rude, cruell, not to trust, 
Inioyd no sooner but dispised straight, 
Past reason hunted, and no sooner had 
^'Past reason hated as a swollowed bayt, 

On purpose layd to make the taker mad. '-^ 
./Made In pursut and in possession so. 
Had, hauing, and in quest, to haue extreame, 
A blisse in proofe and proud and very wo, 
Before a ioy proposd behind a dreame. 

All this the world well knowes yet none knowes well, 
To shun the heauen that leads men to this hell. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 281 



VI. — THE poet's communion WITH THE HIGHER 
MUSE. 

104. 38. 

HOw can my Muse want subiect to inuent 
While thou dost breath that poor'st into my verse, 
Thine owne sweet argument, to excellent, 
For euery vulgar paper to rehearse : 
Oh giue thy selfe the thankes if ought in me. 
Worthy perusal stand against thy sight, 
For who's so dumbe that cannot write to thee, 
When thou thy selfe dost giue inuention light ? 
Be thou the tenth Muse, ten times more in worth 
Then those old nine which rimers inuocate. 
And he that call on thee, let him bring forth 
Eternal numbers to out-liue long date. 

If my slight Muse doe please these curious daies, 
The paine be mine, but thine shal be the praise. 



105- 43. 

WHen most I winke then doe mine eyes best see, 
For all the day they view things vnrespected. 
But when I sleepe, in dreames they looke on thee. 
And darkely bright, are bright in darke directed. 
Then thou whose shaddow shaddowes doth make bright. 
How would thy shadowes forme, forme happy show. 
To the cleere day with thy much cleerer light. 
When to vn-seeing eyes thy shade shines so ? 
How would (I say) mine eyes be blessed made, 
By looking on thee in the lining day ? 
When in dead night their faire imperfect shade. 
Through heauy sleepe on sightlesse eyes doth stay ? 
All dayes are nights to see till I see thee. 
And nights bright daies when dreams do shew thee me. 



282 A New Study of 



106. 



"3. 



Since I left you, mine eye is in my minde, 
And that which gouernes me to goe about, 
Doth part his function, and is partly blind, 
Seemes seeing, but effectually is out : 
For it no forme deliuers to the heart 
Of bird, of flowre, or shape which it doth lack, 
Of his quick obiects hath the minde no part. 
Nor his owne vision houlds what it doth catch : 
For if it see the rud'st or gentlest sight. 
The most sweet-fauor or deformedst creature. 
The mountaine, or the sea, the day, or night : 
The Croe, or Doue, it shapes them to your feature. 
Incapable of more repleat, with you. 
My most true minde thus maketh mine vntrue. 



107. 114. 

OR whether doth my minde being crown'd with you 
Drinke vp the monarks plague this flattery ? 
Or whether shall I say mine eie saith true. 
And that your loue taught it this Alcumie ? 
To make of monsters, and things indigest, 
Such cherubines as your sweet selfe resemble, 
Creating euery bad a perfect best 
As fast as obiects to his beames assemble : 
Oh tis the first, tis flatry in my seeing. 
And my great minde most kingly drinkes it vp. 
Mine eie well knowes what with his gust is greeing, 
And to his pallat doth prepare the cup. 
If it be poison'd, tis the lesser sinne. 
That mine eye loues it and doth first beginne. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 283 



108. 53. 

WHhat is your substance, whereof are you made, 
That millions of strange shaddowes on you tend ? 
Since euery one, hath euery one, one shade, 
And you but one, can euery shaddow lend : 
Describe Adonis and the counterfet. 
Is poorely immitated after you. 
On H'ellens cheeke all art of beautie set, 
And you in Grecian tires are painted new : 
Speake of the spring, and foyzon of the yeare, 
The one doth shaddow of your beautie show, 
The other as your bountie doth appeare. 
And you in euery blessed shape we know. 
In all externall grace you haue some part. 
But you like none, none you for constant heart. 



109. 20. 

AWomans face with natures owne hand painted, 
Haste thou the Master Mistris of my passion, 
A womans gentle hart but not acquainted 
With shifting change as is false womens fashion, 
An eye more bright then theirs, lesse false in rowling : 
Gilding the obiect where-vpon it gazeth, 
A man in hew all Hews in his controwling. 
Which steales mens eyes and womens soules amaseth, 
And for a woman wert thou first created, 
Till nature as she wrought thee fell a dotinge. 
And by addition me of thee defeated. 
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing. 

But since she prickt thee out for womens pleasure. 
Mine be thy loue and thy loues vse their treasure. 



284 A New Study of 



no. io6. 

WHen in the Chronicle of wasted time, 
I see discriptions of the fairest wights, 
And beautie making beautifull old rime. 
In praise of Ladies dead, and lonely Knights, 
Then in the blazon of sweet beauties best. 
Of hand, of foote, of lip, of eye, of brow, 
I see their antique Pen would haue exprest 
Euen such a beauty as you maister now. 
So all their praises are but prophesies 
Of this our time, all you prefiguring. 
And for they look'd but with deuining eyes, 
They had not still enough your worth to sing : 
For we which now behold these present dayes, 
Haue eyes to wonder, but lack toungs to praise. 



III. 59- 

IF their bee nothing new, but that which is, 
Hath beene before, how are our braines beguild, 
Which laboring for inuention beare amisse 
The second burthen of a former child ? 
Oh that record could with a back-ward looke, 
Euen of fiue hundreth courses of the Sunne, 
Show me your image in some antique booke, 
Since minde at first in carrecter was done. 
That I might see what the old world could say. 
To this composed wonder of your frame. 
Whether we are mended, or where better they. 
Or whether reuolution be the same. 
Oh sure I am the wits of former daies, 
To subiects worse haue giuen admiring praise. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 285 



112. 75. 

So are you to my thoughts as food to life, 
Or as sweet season' d shewers are to the ground ; 
And for the peace of you I hold such strife, 
As twixt a miser and his wealth is found. 
Now proud as an inioyer, and anon 
Doubting the filching age will steale his treasure, 
Now counting best to be with you alone. 
Then betterd that the world may see my pleasure, 
Some-time all ful with feasting on your sight. 
And by and by cleane starued for a looke. 
Possessing or pursuing no delight 
Saue what is had, or must from you be tooke. 

Thus do I pine and surfet day by day, 

Or gluttoning on all, or all away. 



113. 64. 

WHen I haue seene by times fell hand defaced 
The rich proud cost of outworne buried age, 
When sometime loftie towers I see downe rased. 
And brasse eternall slaue to mortall rage. 
When I haue seene the hungry Ocean gaine 
Aduantage on the Kingdome of the shoare. 
And the firme soile win of the watry maine, 
Increasing store with losse, and losse with store. 
When I haue seene such interchange of state. 
Or state it selfe confounded, to decay, 
Ruine hath taught me thus to ruminate 
That Time will come and take my loue away. 
This thought is as a death which cannot choose 
But weepe to haue, that which it feares to loose. 



286 A New Study of 



114. 65. 

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundlesse sea, 
But sad mortallity ore-swaies their power. 
How with this rage shall beautie hold a plea. 
Whose action is no stronger then a flower? 
O how shall summers hunny breath hold out, 
Against the wrackfull siedge of battring dayes, 
When rocks impregnable are not so stoute, 
Nor gates of Steele so strong but time decayes ? 
O fearefull meditation, where alack. 
Shall times best lewell from times chest lie hid ? 
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foote back, 
Or who his spoile or beautie can forbid ? 
O none, vnlesse this miracle haue might, 
That in black inck my loue may still shine bright. 



115. 60. 

Like as the waues make towards the pibled shore, 
So do our minuites hasten to their end, 
Each changing place tvith that which goes before, 
In sequent toile all forwards do contend. 
Natiuity once in the maine of light. 
Crawies to maturity, wherewith being crown'd, 
Crooked eclipses gainst his glory fight, 
And time that gaue, doth now his gift confound. 
Time doth transfixe the florish set on youth, 
And delues the paralels in beauties brow, 
Feedes on the rarities of natures truth. 
And nothing stands but for his sieth to mow. 
And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand 
Praising thy worth, dispight his cruell hand. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 287 



116. 62. 

SInne of selfe-loue possesseth al mine eie, 
And all my soule, and al my euery part ; 
And for this sinne there is no remedie, 
It is so grounded inward in my heart. 
Me thinkes no face so gratious is as mine, 
No shape so true, no truth of such account, 
An for my selfe mine owne worth do define, 
As I all other in all worths surmount. 
But when my glasse shewes me my selfe indeed 
Seated and chopt with tand antiquitie, 
Mine owne selfe loue quite contrary I read 
Selfe, so selfe louing were iniquity, 

T'is thee (my selfe) that for my selfe I praise, 
Painting my age with beauty of thy dales. 



117. 103- 

A Lack what pouerty my Muse brings forth. 
That hauing such a skope to show her pride, 
The argument all bare is of more worth 
Then when it hath my added praise beside. 
Oh blame me not if I no more can write ! 
Looke in your glasse and there appeares a face. 
That ouer-goes my blunt inuention quite. 
Dulling my lines, and doing me disgrace. 
Were it not sinfull then striuing to mend. 
To marre the subiect that before was well. 
For to no other passe my verses tend, 
Then of your graces and your gifts to tell. 

And more, much more then in my verse can fit. 
Your owne glasse showes you when you looke in it. 



288 A New Study of 



"8. 39. 

OH how thy worth with manners may I singe. 
When thou art all the better part of me ? 
What can mine owne praise to mine owne selfe bring ; 
And what is't but mine owne when I praise thee, 
Euen for this, let vs deuided Hue, 
And our deare loue loose name of single one 
That by this seperation I may giue : 
That due to thee which thou deseru'st alone : 
Oh absence what a torment wouldst thou proue. 
Were it not thy soure leisure gaue sweet leaue. 
To entertaine the time with thoughts of loue, 
Which time and thoughts so sweetly dost deceiue. 
And that thou teachest how to make one twaine, 
By praising him here who doth hence remaine. 



"9 37- 

AS a decrepit father takes delight, 
To see his actiue childe do deeds of youth, 

So I, made lame by Fortunes dearest spight 

Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth. 

For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit, 

Or any of these all, or all, or more 

Intitled in their parts, do crowned sit, 

I make my loue ingrafted to this store : 

So then I am not lame, poore, not dispis'd, 

Whilst that this shadow doth such substance giue, 

That I in thy abundance am suffic'd, 

And by a part of all thy glory Hue : 

Looice what is best, that best I wish in thee, 
This wish I haue, then ten times happy me. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 289 



120. 36. 

LEt me confesse that we two must be twaine, 
Although our vndeuided loues are one : 
So shall those blots that do with me remaine, 
Without thy helpe, by me be borne alone. 
In our two loues there is but one respect, 
Though in our Hues a seperable spight, 
Which though it alter not loues sole effect, 
Yet doth it steale sweet houres from loues delight, 
I may not euer-more acknowledge thee. 
Least my bewailed guilt should do thee shame, 
Nor thou with publike kindnesse honour me, 
Vnlesse thou take that honour from thy name : 
But doe not so, I loue thee in such sort, 
As thou being mine, mine is thy good report. 



121. 76. 

WHy is my verse so barren of new pride ? 
So far from variation or quicke change ? 
Why with the time do I not glance aside 
To new found methods, and to compounds strange ? 
Why write I still all one, euer the same. 
And keepe inuention in a noted weed. 
That euery word doth almost fel my name, 
Shewing their birth, and where they did proceed ? 
O know sweet loue I alwaies write of you, 
And you and loue are still my argument : 
So all my best is dressing old words new, 
Spending againe what is already spent : 

For as the Sun is daily new and old. 

So is my loue still telling what is told. 

19 



290 A New Study of 



122. 78. 

So oft haue I inuok'd thee for my Muse, 
And found such faire assistance in my verse, 
As euery Alien pen hath got my vse, 
And vnder thee their poesie disperse. 
Thine eyes, that taught the dumbe on high to sing, 
And heauie ignorance aloft to flie, 
Haue added fethers to the learneds wing, 
And giuen grace a double Maiestie. 
Yet be most proud of that which I compile, 
Whose influence is thine, and borne of thee, 
In others workes thou doost but mend the stile. 
And Arts with thy sweete graces graced be. 
But thou art all my art, and doost aduance 
As high as learning, my rude ignorance. 



123. 79. 

7/jf / Hilst I alone did call vpon thy ayde, 
yy My verse alone had all thy gentle grace, 
But now my gracious numbers are decayde, 
And my sick Muse doth giue an other place. 
I grant (sweet loue) thy louely argument 
Deserues the trauaile of a worthier pen, 
Yet what of thee thy Poet doth inuent, 
He robs thee of, and payes it thee againe. 
He lends thee vertue, and he stole that word, 
From thy behauiour, beautie doth he giue 
And found it in thy cheeke : he can affoord 
No praise to thee, but what in thee doth Hue. 
Then thanke him not for that which he doth say. 
Since what he owes thee, thou thy selfe doost pay. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 291 



124. 83. 

I Grant thou wert not married to my Muse, 
And therefore maiest without attaint ore-looke 
The dedicated words which writers vse 
Of their faire subiect, blessing eury booke. 
Thou art as faire in knowledge as in hew, 
Finding thy worth a limmit past my praise, 
And therefore art inforc'd to seeke anew, 
Some fresher stampe of the time bettering dayes, 
And do so loue, yet when they haue deuisde, 
What strained touches Rhethorick can lend. 
Thou truly faire, wert truly simpathizde, 
In true plaine words, by thy true telling friend. 
And their grosse painting might be better vs'd. 
Where cheekes need blood, in thee it is abus'd. 



125. 83. 

INeuer saw that you did painting need, 
And therefore to your faire no painting set, 
I found (or thought I found) you did exceed, 
The barren tender of a Poets debt : 
And therefore haue I slept in your report, 
That you your selfe being extant well might show, 
How farre a moderne quill doth come to short. 
Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow, 
This silence for my sinne you did impute, 
Which shall be most my glory being dombe. 
For I impaire not beautie being mute. 
When others would giue life, and bring a tombe. 
There Hues more life in one of your faire eyes. 
Then both your Poets can in praise deuise. 



292 A New Study of 



126. 84. 

WHO is it that sayes most, which can say more, 
Then this rich praise, that you alone, are you, 
In whose confine immured is the store, 
Which should example where your equall grew, 
Leane penurie within that Pen doth dwell, 
That to his subiect lends not some small glory, 
But he that writes of you, if he can tell. 
That you are you, so dignifies his story. 
Let him but coppy what in you is writ. 
Not making worse what nature made so cleere. 
And such a counter-part shall fame his wit. 
Making his stile admired euery where. 

You to your beautious blessings adde a curse. 

Being fond on praise, which makes your praises worse. 



127. 85. 

MY toung-tide Muse in manners holds her still. 
While comments of your praise richly compil'd 
Reserne their Character with goulden quill. 
And precious phrase by all the Muses fil'd, 
I thinke good thoughts, whilst other write good wordes. 
And like vnlettered clarke still crie Amen, 
To euery Himne that able spirit affords. 
In polisht for ne of well refined pen. 
Hearing you praisd, I say 'tis so, 'tis true. 
And to the most of praise adde some-thing more, 
But that is in my thought, whose loue to you 
(Though words come hind-most) holds his ranke before, 
Then others, for the breath of words respect. 
Me for my dombe thoughts, speaking in effect. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 293 



128. 80. 

OHow I faint when I of you do write, 
Knowing a better spirit doth vse your name, 
And in the praise thereof spends all his might, 
To make me toung-tide speaking of your fame. 
But since your worth (wide as the Ocean is) 
The humble as the proudest saile doth beare. 
My sawsie barke (inferior farre to his) 
On your broad maine doth wilfully appeare. 
Your shallowest helpe will hold me vp a floate, 
Whilst he vpon your soundlesse deepe doth ride, 
Or (being wrackt) I am a worthlesse bote. 
He of tall building, and of goodly pride. 
Then If he thriue and I be cast away, 
The worst was this, my loue was my decay. 



129. 

WAs it the proud full saile of his great verse. 
Bound for the prize of (all to precious) you. 
That did my ripe thoughts in my braine inhearce, 
Making their tombe the wombe wherein they grew ? 
Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write, 
Aboue a mortall pitch, that struck me dead? 
No, neither he, nor his compiers by night 
Giuing him ayde, my verse astonished. 
He nor that affable familiar ghost 
Which nightly gulls him with intelligence, 
As victors of my silence cannot boast, 
I was not sick of any feare from thence. 
But when your countinance fild vp his line. 
Then lackt I matter, that infeebled mine. 



86. 



294 A New Study of 



130- 49- 

A Gainst that time (if euer that time come) 
When I shall see thee frown e on my defects, 
When as thy loue hath cast his vtmost summe, 
Cauld to that audite by aduis'd respects, 
Against that time when thou shalt strangely passe, 
And scarcely greete me with that sunne thine eye. 
When loue conuerted from the thing it was 
Shall reasons finde of setled grauitie. 
Against that time do I insconce me here 
Within the knowledge of mine owne desart, 
And this my hand, against my selfe vpreare, 
To guard the lawfull reasons on thy part, 

To leaue poore me, thou hast the strength of lawes. 
Since why to loue, I can alledge no cause. 



131. 88. 

WHen thou shalt be dispode to set me light, 
And place my merrit in the eie of skorne, 
Vpon thy side, against my selfe ile fight. 
And proue thee virtuous, though thou art forsworne : 
With mine owne weakenesse being best acquainted, 
Vpon thy part I can set downe a story 
Of faults conceald, wherein I am attainted : 
That thou in loosing me, shall win much glory : 
And I by this wil be a gainer too. 
For bending all my louing thoughts on thee, 
The injuries that to my selfe I doe, 
Doing thee vantage, duble vantage me, 
Such is my loue, to thee I so belong. 
That for thy right, my selfe will beare all wrong. 



s 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 295 



132. 89. 

Ay that thou didst forsake mee for some fait, 
_ And I will comment upon that offence, 
Speake of my lamenesse, and I straight will halt : 
Against thy reasons making no defence. 
Thou canst not (loue) disgrace me halfe so ill. 
To set a forme vpon desired change, 
As ile my selfe disgrace, knowing thy wil, 
I will acquaintance strangle and looke strange : 
Be absent from thy walkes and in my tongue. 
Thy sweet beloued name no more shall dwell. 
Least I (too much prophane) should do it wronge : 
And haphe of our old acquamtance tell. 
For thee, against my selfe ile vow debate, 
For I must nere loue him whom thou dost hate. 



133. 9°- 

THen hate me when thou wilt, if euer, now. 
Now while the world is bent my deeds to crosse, 

loyne with the spight of fortune, make me bow. 

And doe not drop in for an after losse : 

Ah doe not, when my heart hath scapte this sorrow, 

Come in the rereward of a conquerd woe, 

Giue not a windy night a rainie morrow, 

To linger out a purposd ouer-throw. 

If thou wilt leaue, me, do not leaue me last, _ 

When other pettie grief es haue done their spight. 

But in the onset come, so stall I taste 

At first the very worst of fortunes might. 

And other straines of woe, which now seeme woe, 
Compar'd with losse of thee, will not seeme so. 



296 A New Study of 



134. 91- 

SOme glory in their birth, some in their skill, 
Some in their wealth, some in their bodies force, 
Some in their garments though new-fangled ill : 
Some in their Hawkes and Hounds, some in their Horse. 
And euery humor hath his adiunct pleasure, 
Wherein it findes a ioy aboue the rest. 
But these perticulers are not my measure, 
All these I better in one generall best. 
Thy loue is bitter then high birth to me. 
Richer then wealth, prouder then garments cost, 
Of more delight then Hawkes or Horses bee : 
And hauing thee, of all mens pride I boast. 
Wretched in this alone, that thou maist take. 
All this away, and me most wretched make. 



135- 92. 

BVt doe thy worst to steale thy selfe away. 
For tearme of life thou are assured mine. 

And life no longer then thy loue will stay. 

For it depends vpon that loue of thine. 

Then need I not to feare the worst of wrongs. 

When in the least of them my life hath end, 

I see, a better state to me belongs 

Then that, which on thy humor doth depend. 

Thou canst not vex me with inconstant minde, 

Since that my life on thy reuolt doth lie. 

Oh what a happy title do I finde, 

Happy to haue thy loue, happy to die ! 

But whats so blessed faire that feares no blot, 
Thou maist be falce, and yet I know it not. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 297 



136. 93- 

So shall I Hue, supposing thou art true, 
Like a deceiued husband, so loues face, 
May still seeme loue to me, though alter'd new : 
Thy lookes with me, thy heart in other place. 
For their can Hue no hatred in thine eye. 
Therefore in that I cannot know thy change. 
In manies lookes, the falce hearts history 
Is writ in moods and frounes and wrinckles strange, 
But heauen in thy creation did decree. 
That in thy face sweet loue should euer dwell, 
What ere thy thoughts, or thy hearts workings be. 
Thy lookes should nothing thence, but sweetnesse tell. 
How like Eaues apple doth thy beauty grow, 
If thy sweet vertue answere not thy show. 



137- 33- 

FVll many a glorious morning haue I seene, 
Flatter the mountaine tops with soueraine eie. 
Kissing with golden face the meddowes greene ; 
Guilding pale streames with heauenly alcumy : 
Anon permit the basest cloudes to ride. 
With ougly rack on his celestiall face, 
And from the for-lorne world his visage hide 
Stealing vnseene to west with this disgrace : 
Euen so my Sunne one early morne did shine, 
With all triumphant splendor on my brow, 
But out alack, he was but one houre mine. 
The region cloude hath mask'd him from me now. 
Yet him for this, my loue no whit disdaineth. 
Suns of the world may staine, whe heauens sun stainteh. 



298 A New Study of 



138- 34. 

WHy didst thou promise such a beautious day, 
And make me trauaile forth without my cloake, 
To let bace cloudes ore-take me in my way, 
Hiding thy brau'ry in their rotten smoke. 
Tis not enough that through the cloude thou breake, 
To dry the raine on my storme-beaten face. 
For no man well of such a salue can speake, 
That heales the wound, and cures not the disgrace : 
Nor can thy shame giue phisicke to my griefe. 
Though thou repent, yet I haue still the losse, 
Th' offenders sorrow lends but weake reliefe 
To him that beares the strong offenses losse. 

Ah but those teares are pearle which thy loue sheeds, 
And they are ritch, and ransome all ill deeds. 



139. 5^- 

Sweet loue renew thy force, be it not said 
Thy edge should blunter be then apetite, 
Which but too daie by feeding is alaied, 
To morrow sharpned in his former might. 
So loue be thou, although too daie thou fill 
Thy hungrie eies, euen till they winck with fulnesse, 
Too morrow see againe, and doe not kill 
The spirit of Loue, with a perpetual dulnesse : 
Let this sad Intrim like the Ocean be 
Which parts the shore, where two contracted new, 
Come daily to the banckes, that when they see : 
Returne of loue, more blest may be the view. 
As cal it Winter, which being ful of care, 
Makes Somers welcome, thrice more wish'd, more rare. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 299 



140. 100. 

WHere art thou Muse that thou forgetst so long, 
To speake of that which giues thee all thy might ? 

Spendst thou thy furie on some worthlesse songe, 

Darkning thy powre to lend base subiects light. 

Returne forgetfull Muse, and straight redeeme, 

In gentle numbers time so idely spent, 

Sing to the eare that doth thy laies esteeme, 

And giues thy pen both skill and argument. 

Rise resty Muse, my loues sweet face suruay, 

If time haue any wrincle grauen there, 

If any, be a Satire to decay, 

And make times spoiles dispised euery where. 
Giue my loue fame faster then time wasts life, 
So thou preuenst his sieth, and crooked knife. 



141. lOI. 

OH truant Muse what shalbe thy amends, 
For thy neglect of truth in beauty di'd ? 

Both truth and beauty on my loue depends : 

So dost thou too, and therein dignifi'd : 

Make answere Muse, wilt thou not haply saie, 

Truth needs no collour with his collour fixt, 

Beautie no pensell, beauties truth to lay : 

But best is best, if neuer intermixt. 

Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb ? 

Excuse not silence so, for't lies in thee, 

To make him much out-liue a gilded tombe : 

And to be praisd of ages yet to be. 

Then do thy office Muse, I teach thee how, 

To make him seeme long hence, as he showes now. 



300 A New Study of 



142. 107. 

MY loue is strengthned though more weake in seeming 
I loue not lesse, thogh lesse the show appeare, 
That loue is marchandiz'd, whose ritch esteeming, 
The owners tongue doth publish euery where. 
Our loue was new, and then but in the spring, 
When I was wont to greet it with my laies. 
As Philomell in summers front doth singe. 
And stops his pipe in growth of riper daies : 
Not that the summer is lesse pleasant now 
Then when her mournefull himns did hush the night, 
But that wild musick burthens euery bow, 
And sweets growne common loose their deare delight. 
Therefore like her, I some-time hold my tongue : 
Because I would not dull you with my songe. 



143. .110. 

A Las 'tis true, I haue gone here and there. 
And make my selfe a motley to the view, 

Gor'd mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most deare, 

Made old offences of affections new. 

Most true it is, that I haue lookt on truth 

Asconce and strangely : But by all aboue, 

These blenches gaue my heart an other j'^outh. 

And worse essaies prou'd thee my best of loue, 

Now all is done, haue what shall haue no end. 

Mine appetite I neuermore will grin'de 

On newer proofe, to trie an older friend, 

A God in loue, to whom I am confin'd. 

Then giue me welcome, next my heauen the best, 
Euen to thy pure and most most louing brest. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 301 



144. III. 

OFor my sake doe you wish fortune chide, 
The guiltie goddesse of my harmfull deeds, 
That did not better for my life prouide, 
Then publick meanes which publick manners breeds. 
Thence comes it that my name receiues a brand, 
And almost thence my nature is subdu'd 
To what it workes in, like the Dyers hand, 
Pitty me then, and wish I were renu'de, 
Whilst like a willing pacient I will drinke, 
Potions of Eysell gainst my strong infection, 
No bitternesse that I will bitter thinke, 
Nor double pennance to correct correction. 
Pittie me then deare friend, and I assure yee, 
Euen that your pittie is enough to cure mee. 



145. II 

YOur loue and pittie doth th* impression fill, 
Which vulgar scandall stampt vpon my brow. 
For what care I who calls me well or ill, 
So you ore-greene my bad, my good alow ? 
You are my All the world, and I must striue. 
To know my shames and praises from your tongue, 
None else to me, nor I to none aliue, 
That my steel'd sence or changes right or wrong. 
In so profound Abisme I throw all care 
Of others voyces, that my Adders sence, 
To cryttick and to flatterer stopped are : 
Marke how with my neglect I doe dispence. 
You are so strongly in my purpose bred, 
That all the world besides me thinkes y'are dead. 



302 A New Study of 



146. 117. 

Accuse me thus, that I haue scanted all, 
Wherein I should your great deserts repay, 
Forgot vpon your dearest loue to call, 
Whereto al bonds do tie me day by day, 
That I haue frequent binne with vnknown mindes. 
And giuen to time your owne dear purchas'd right, 
That 1 haue hoysted saile to al the windes 
Which should transport me farthest from your sight. 
Booke both my wiifulnesse and errors downe. 
And on iust proofe surmise, accumilate, 
Bring me within the leuel of your frowne. 
But shoote not at me in your wakened hate : 
Since my appeale saies I did striue to prooue 
The constancy and virtue of your loue. 



147. 118, 

Like as to make our appetites more keene 
With eager compounds we our pallat vrge, 
As to preuent our malladies vnseene, 
We sicken to shun sicknesse when we purge, 
Euen so being full of your nere cloying sweetnesse, 
To bitter fawces did I frame my feeding ; 
And sicke of wel-fare found a kind of meetnesse, 
To be diseas'd ere that there was true needing. 
Thus pollicie in loue t'anticipate 
The ills that were, not grew to faults assured, 
And brought to medicine a healthfull state 
Which rancke of goodnesse would by ill be cured. 
But thence I learne and find the lesson true, 
Drugs poyson him that so fell sicke of you. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 303 



148. 107. 

Not mine owne feares, nor the prophetick soule, 
Of the wide world, dreaming on things to come, 
Can yet the lease of my true loue controule, 
Supposde as forfeit to a confin'd doome. 
The mortall Moone hath her eclipse indur'de, 
And the sad Augurs mock their owne presage, 
Incertenties now crowne them-selues assur'de, 
And peace proclaimes Oliues of endlesse age, 
Now with the drops of this most balmie time, 
My loue lookes fresh, and death to me subscribes, 
Since spight of him lie Hue in this poore rime, 
While he insults ore dull and speachleise tribes. 
And thou in this shalt finde thy monument, 
When tyrants crests and tombs of brasse are spent. 



149. 108. 

W Hat's in the braine that Inck may character. 
Which hath not figur'd to thee my true spirit, 

What's new to speake, what now to register. 

That may expresse my loue, or thy deare merit ? 

Nothing sweet boy, but yet like prayers diuine, 

I must each day say ore the very same, 

Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine, 

Euen as when first I hallowed thy faire name. 

So that eternall loue in loues fresh case, 

Waighes not the dust and iniury of age. 

Nor giues to necessary wrinckles place. 

But makes antiquitie for aye his page, 

Finding the first conceit of loue there bred. 
Where time and outward forme would shew it dead. 



304 A New Study of 



150. 123. 

No ! Time, thou shalt not host that I doe change, 
Thy pyramyds buylt vp with newer might 
To me are nothing nouell, nothing strange, 
They are but dressings of a former sight : 
Our dates are breefe, and therefor we admire, 
What thou dost foyst vpon vs that is ould, 
And rather make them borne to our desire, 
Then thinke that we before haue heard them tould : 
Thy registers and thee I both defie, 
Not wondring at the present, nor the past. 
For thy records, and what we see doth lye, 
Made more or les by thy continuall hast : 
This I doe vow and this shall euer be, 
I will be true dispight thy syeth and thee. 



151. 124. 

YF my deare loue were but the childe of state, 
It might for fortunes basterd be vnfathered, 
As subiect to times loue, or to times hate. 
Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gatherd, 
No it was buylded far from accident. 
It suffers not in smilinge pomp, nor falls 
Vnder the blow of thralled discontent. 
Whereto th'inuiting time our fashion calls : 
It feares not policy that Heriticke, 
Which workes on leases of short numbred howers, 
But all alone stands hugely pollitick, 
That it nor growes with heat, nor drownes with showres. 
To this I witnes call the foles of time. 
Which die for goodnes, who haue liu'd for crime. 



The Sonnets of Shakespeare 305 



152. 125. 

WEr't ought to me I bore the canopy, 
With my extern the outward honoring, 
Or layd great bases for eternity. 
Which proues more short then wast or ruining ? 
Haue I not seene dwellers on forme and fauor 
Lose all, and more by paying too much rent 
For compound sweet ; Forgoing simple sauor, 
Pittifull thriuors in their gazing spent. 
Noe, let me be obsequious in thy heart. 
And take thou my oblacion, poore but free, 
Which is not mixt with seconds, knows no art, 
But mutuall render onely me for thee. 

Hence, thou subbornd Informer, a trew soule 
When most impeacht, stands least in thy controule. 



153- loS- 

LEt not my loue be cal'd Idolatrie, 
Nor my beloued as an Idoll show. 
Since all alike my songs and praises be 
To one, of one, still such, and euer so. 
Kinde is m_y loue to day, to morrow kinde, 
Still constant in a wondrous excellence, 
Therefore my verse to constancie confin'de, 
One thing expressing, leaues out difference. 
Faire, kinde, and true, is all my argument, 
Faire, kinde and true, varrying to other words, 
And in this change is my inuention spent, 
Three theams in one, which wondrous scope affords. 

Faire, kinde, and true, haue often liu'd_ alone. 

Which three till now, neuer kept seate in one. 



3o6 The Sonnets of Shakespeare 



154. 55. 

Not marble, nor the guilded monument, 
Of Princes shall out-liue this powrefull rime. 
But you shall shine more bright in these contents 
Then vnswept stone, besmeer'd with sluttish time. 
When wastefull warre shall Statues ouer-turne, 
And broiles roote out the worke of masonry. 
Nor Mars his sword, nor warres quick fire shall burne : 
The lining record of your memory. 
Gainst death, and all obliuious emnity 
Shall you pace forth, praise shall stil finde roome, 
Euen in the eyes of all posterity 
That weare this world out to the ending doome. 
So til the iudgement that your selfe arise, 
You liue in this, and dwell in iouers eies. 



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